


Someone Serious

by SecretFandomStories



Category: DUMAS Alexandre - Works, Les Trois Mousquetaires | The Three Musketeers Series - Alexandre Dumas, Young Blades (TV)
Genre: F/M, Friends to Lovers, Past Child Abuse
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2005-02-02
Updated: 2005-02-02
Packaged: 2021-03-08 20:28:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 31,286
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27372706
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SecretFandomStories/pseuds/SecretFandomStories
Summary: “If I wanted someone- which I don’t- it certainly wouldn’t be someone flippant like you. It would be someone serious.”
Relationships: Jacqueline Roget/Siroc, Siroc/Jacqueline Roget
Kudos: 1





	Someone Serious

**Author's Note:**

> A great many people made this story possible: the cast and crew of Young Blades for their excellent work on a short-lived but magnificent show, especially Karen Cliche and Mark Hildreth, whose portrayals of Jacqueline and Siroc provided the inspiration for this piece.
> 
> Everyone on the Unofficial Young Blades forum who reviewed and left kind posts in the ‘Someone Serious’ thread and kept me going through the darkest hours when this story had me beating my head against the wall.
> 
> My faithful beta-reader Jediblulady, who caught every chapter fresh off the press and beat the squalling, malformed text into readable prose and provided continual encouragement. Without her, ‘Someone Serious’ might never have been finished, and certainly would not have been as well-written.

~*~

Chapter One: Fair Behavior

The last rainstorms of spring had turned the country tracks outside of Paris to mud, which daubed the pair of Musketeers assigned to patrol that day, though one was significantly dirtier than the other by the time the two had stabled their horses and returned to Headquarters. Mud covered d'Artagnan from boot heels to waist and continued indiscriminately upward to smear his gray jacket and clump in his queue. Jacqueline, who had ridden out with him, divested herself of dirt simply by scraping her boot heels on the mat before stepping inside.

“Hola!” Seated at the table, Ramon looked up from his plate of fish as the two entered. “What happened to you, amigo?” he asked upon sighting the Abominable Mudman.

D'Artagnan muttered something that might possibly have involved the word nothing, and then, at Ramon’s puzzled expression, said, “I fell off my horse.”

“You did not!” Jacqueline turned around from hanging up her pristine jacket. “I pushed you off your horse.”

A smudge of dirt on his nose detracted somewhat from d'Artagnan’s affronted glare. “What cause would you have to unhorse a brother Musketeer?” Back to Ramon, he gave her a look that dared her to give a reason.

She cocked an eyebrow at him and shrugged. “You called me Jacqueline,” said Jacqueline triumphantly.

Ramon burst out laughing, revealing dimples and a mouthful of white teeth. “Ha! I would do more than push you in the mud if you dared to call me Ramona.” He clapped Jacqueline on the shoulder. She winced.

Mouth open, d'Artagnan stopped, closed it, and cleared his throat. “Well. If you’ll excuse me, Jacques, Ramon, I have to go and get ready for Giselle. My date. With Giselle. In half an hour.” And he stalked off, dislodging tiny mud clumps which showered the floor and could be heard sprinkling in his wake after he’d slammed the door.

Jacqueline glared after him until Ramon caught her eye and she had to laugh too. Grinning, she gestured at his empty plate. “Is there any more of that?”

“Sadly, no. It was a noble dish.” He struck a pose, fork upraised.

“That’s all right,” Jacqueline said hastily before he could begin rhapsodizing. “I’ll have a sandwich, or something, and go to bed.” She yawned.

“Oh, no, you won’t,” Siroc said from the doorway. As the other two turned, he stepped forward and plunked a stack of leather-bound books onto the table. “Captain Duval dropped these by before he went home.” 

Jacqueline stared nonplussed at the volumes as Ramon, chuckling, took his plate to the scullery. She looked to Siroc for an explanation. He shrugged. “A Musketeer must be well-educated, classically educated. It’s in the Code: you have to pass the Examen d’Ecole Classique your first year.”

A look of abject horror passed over Jacqueline’s face, and then she coughed and tried to pretend that she had of course heard of the test and could no doubt pass it with ease. And then pragmatism kicked in. She cleared her throat. “Don’t you think this is a little excessive in my case? I am a gentleman, after all. I’ve had a classical education.”

Siroc shrugged. “It’s not that hard. Even d'Artagnan passed it the first time, and the only thing he ever reads is poetry to his latest conquest. But you can speak to Captain Duval about it if you want.” 

The horror in Jacqueline’s eyes grew as he turned away. “Um, Siroc?” He turned back, one brow raised. “I don’t think I can. What I told him before he let me join wasn’t exactly, ah, true.” The other eyebrow went up. “I’m not a gentleman, and I haven’t had a classical education. I can’t even-” her voice faltered, dipping lower instead of higher, from long practice. “I can’t even read.”

There. It was out, and now his eyes, the color of watered coffee, wouldn’t let her look away. His mouth tightened, his brow furrowed. “What?”

“I never learned,” she explained defensively. “There wasn’t time, and we didn’t have the money for school. They don’t teach farmers’ d- I mean, farmers these things.” She gestured at the books.

“Well, we all have our secrets.” He looked down for a moment. “I could teach you, if you like.” His eyes made the statement a question, though he tried to keep his tone diffident.

Jacqueline waved him away. “No, no. You have to invent things for the King.”

“You could help me,” he offered. “I need an assistant. D'Artagnan thinks it’s boring, and Ramon gets food everywhere.”

“And you’d teach me to read? Those?” Jacqueline stared skeptically at the books. 

“Sure.” He thought about adding It isn’t that hard, and didn’t. “Come on. We can start tonight. The test’s in two months.” Turning, he led the way down the hall. 

A little reluctantly, Jacqueline hefted the books and followed, but stopped short as Siroc paused in the door to his laboratory, fumbling for something on the other side of the wall. After a moment, he found it, and she heard a switch flip. 

Jacqueline gasped as light flooded the room, sparkling off ranks of chemical equipment, more glass than she had ever seen before. The unnatural radiance also illuminated a shelf of books with titles embossed in gold and several long blackboards chalked with what appeared to be cabbalistic figures. The only familiar thing in the room was a tiny forge, sitting dark in one corner. Jacqueline stared upwards. A bank of windows set midway up the wall must light the room by day, but the currently artificial incandescence drew her attention now, sparkling from lamps and globes on walls and ceiling.

“I’d forgotten you hadn’t seen it before.” Siroc looked around, grinning with not a little pride.

“It’s amazing,” Jacqueline breathed. “Do you light it with oil?”

“No, it’s gas. Natural gas,” he explained, shucking off jacket and tunic, and rolling up his shirtsleeves.

Jacqueline wrinkled her nose. “You mean-”

He caught her expression. “No. It occurs naturally in the ground, and burns when compressed. Or not, as the case may be.” Siroc grimaced. “It’s highly flammable.”

Jacqueline looked around again, still awestruck. “I can see.”

“You can put the books down anywhere you can find space. We won’t need them for awhile.” As Jacqueline laid the stack on a workbench not filled with models and papers, Siroc, busy tying on a long leather apron, gestured to one of the blackboards. “Use that one. Wipe it off.”

Jacqueline took out her handkerchief and paused, hovering over the chalk marks. “What’s on it? It looks important.”

“It’s an equation to calculate the circumference of the earth, based on Eratosthenes’ approach.” Siroc shrugged. “Although he assumed a perfect sphere, and was two hundred feet too short. The globe bulges in the middle, you know.” Jacqueline’s expression made it clear that she didn’t. “Well, I’m confident that my numbers are correct. You can erase it.”

Still doubtful, she obeyed, stepped back, and, eyes still on Siroc, nearly tripped on a tangle of hoses on the floor. “Gah!”

Suppressing a grin, he crossed to stand beside her, chalk in hand. “Coil those up, would you?” While Jacqueline bent and tried with difficulty to find an end in the mess to begin at, he took a deep breath and began to write, trying to explain as he did so. “There are twenty-six letters, which are used to make words. Each letter has a different sound.” He finished the alphabet and stood back.

Jacqueline, hose in hand, looked at the board in dismay. “Twenty-six! Can’t you just teach me the most important ones?”

“You’ll have to use them all, eventually, but some are more important than others.” He went back and underlined five letters. “These are the vowels. Each word has to have at least one of them. They have more different sounds than the other letters. With me so far?”

The coil of hose under Jacqueline’s arm had grown with the despair in her eyes, but she managed a small nod. “Once you know the names,” he said encouragingly, “it’s easier to remember the sounds.” Pointing, Siroc recited the alphabet. “Now you do it.”

With much prompting, Jacqueline struggled through half the letters, giving up completely after confusing M and N. She shook her head, glaring at the board. “Look, Siroc, don’t, um, tell the others about this, all right?” She waved her hand at the letters.

He nodded, eyes softening. “Your secret is safe with me. Now, try it again.”

Groaning, Jacqueline did, and then held up the neat coil. “Where do you want this?”

“Um-” Siroc ran a hand through his hair and looked around. “Somewhere out of the way. In the corner.” He pointed, and grabbed paper and quill as Jacqueline crossed to deposit the hose.

When she returned and peered over his shoulder, she found, in a careful, spiky script, another, larger set of characters written on the paper. “You’ve got fifty-two there,” she pointed out, trying to contain her dismay.

Siroc finished with a flourish and looked up. “Well, you won’t have any trouble with the mathematics section of the test, at any rate.” He pointed with the quill. “Each letter can be written two ways, in upper- and lowercase. Uppercase is the larger ones. They’re used for beginning names and sentences, and the smaller ones for everything else. All right?”

He waited for her to nod. “Here, take this,” handing her the parchment, “and learn them. You might practice writing them, as well, for tomorrow.”

Trying to suppress a yawn, Jacqueline folded the paper carefully and tucked it into her pocket. She looked around. The laboratory was still singularly untidy, but she could remedy that later. “Thanks, Siroc, I-” She knew him too well for a handshake, and not well enough for an embrace. “Thank you,” she said again, trying to put all of her gratitude into the words and still retain some vestige of masculinity.

With an odd mixture of shrug and nod, he smiled, the expression transforming his already finely drawn, sensitive face into a thing of angelic beauty. “Glad to help a friend.” Jacqueline caught her breath and felt her heart, a knot since her mother’s death, begin to unravel a little. 

Chapter Two: The Form of My Intent

Muttering the alphabet to herself, Jacqueline stared into the swirling coffee, her third cup of the morning. Forced to begin the day at the same unholy hour as the rest of the Musketeers even though she had no assigned duties that day, Jacqueline had dressed by feel and staggered across the rain-soaked street to Café Nouveau. One of a handful of 

patrons, and the only Musketeer, she had sat at the bar.

Ramon and Siroc had patrol that day. She had not seen d'Artagnan since the night before and assumed he had never returned from his date. Jacqueline grinned, hoping she could manage to be present when Captain Duval caught his prodigy sneaking back into headquarters. In her two weeks with the Musketeers, she‘d learned that the Captain tended to conduct his dressings down in public and at a high volume.

After taking another gulp of coffee, Jacqueline reached up to rub her right shoulder, wrenched during fencing practice the other day. The last-ditch lunge had gotten through her adversary’s guard, though, and earned her the applause of the assembled trainees. She grinned again at the memory, and looked up into a blast of warm, moist air, redolent with yeast and butter.

The door behind the counter, presumably leading from the kitchen, had ejected a round-faced young man of medium height wearing a floppy toque and white apron. Seeing her at the bar, he grimaced and undid his apron strings. Yanking the floury garment over his head dislodged the hat, so he tossed both under the bar as he slammed back into the kitchen. Frowning, Jacqueline watched him go and return with a tray of squarish, golden pastries. 

“Try one of these for me?” Taking one himself, he slid the tray across the bar.

Jacqueline picked a bun up and stared at it for a moment before carefully biting in. The tender, buttery layers of pastry separated easily and the filling, unfamiliar but delicious, tasted of heaven. “It’s good,” she mumbled, trying to keep the gooey brown stuff from dripping down her chin. “What is it?”

“I haven’t decided yet. Either pattissé Etienne or pain au chocolat.” He looked critically down at the tray. “I’ve just created them.”

Jacqueline took another bite, gesturing with the bun. “Do you work here?” It was a terribly obvious question, but the fellow had plied her with free pastry, so Jacqueline felt the need to at least keep up her end of the conversation.

“Baker and sous-chef; I do everything except give the orders.” He shrugged, picking at the pastry.

“And you’re a Musketeer.” The non-question cut through the conversation, formerly as light as the pastry they discussed, turning it serious. “I’ve seen you in here before with the others.”

Mouth full of pastry, Jacqueline shrugged. “So?” She took another bite, not sure where he was going. His expression, half fearful and half hoping, puzzled her. 

“Noret!” A voice bellowed through the open kitchen door, and the boy’s fierce, intense eyes blazed for a moment. “I’ve got to go,” he said, sounding slightly strangled. “I’m glad there’s another one.” And, retrieving his apron and tugging his hat back over his shock of blond hair, he ducked back into the kitchen.

Jacqueline stared after him, the mouthful of pastry sticking in her throat. What had he meant, another one? She had half a mind to barge into the kitchen and make him explain, but a loud, one-sided argument had begun on the other side of the door, which was still ajar, the shouting directed, Jacqueline thought, at Noret rather than coming from him. She stayed frozen where she was, thinking furiously.

Could he possibly have seen through her disguise? Jacqueline could not imagine adding this boy, who had been quite nice, to the list below Mimou, whose perception and kindness still made her smile, and d’Artagnan, who had only guessed with the evidence before him and Gerard to explain. Unable to completely ignore this possibility, she at least put d'Artagnan out of her head, but even forcibly evicting him made her wonder whether he’d said or done something at the Café, with or without her present, that had broadcast his knowledge of her gender to Noret, who might have been watching.

Spitting her sticky mouthful into a napkin, Jacqueline told herself to calm down. She interacted with men every day, and none of them had realized who—what—she was. This one, a comparative stranger, couldn’t possibly have. Not possibly, she told herself, willing her pounding heart slower. He must have meant another Musketeer. D'Artagnan probably picks on him. 

Booting d'Artagnan a second time, she gathered up her sword and baldric and shouldered her way out of the rapidly filling Café. Outside, it had begun to rain again. Pressed back under the eaves, Jacqueline turned her collar up, tucked her sword under her jacket, and prepared to wait it out.

Five minutes later, the downpour had only grown heavier, and a leaky gutter had dropped a stream of icy water down the back of her neck. Deciding she couldn’t get any wetter, Jacqueline made a dash across the street, dodging a carriage and a ragged animal of indeterminate specie, to blessed refuge in Musketeer Headquarters. 

Despite the terrible weather, the building was relatively empty, so Jacqueline managed to avoid encounters and questions as she headed toward her room. On the way, though, she passed the door that led to Siroc’s laboratory and paused.

The place did need a good cleaning, and doing so would be more useful than sulking in her room or doing drills in the gymnasium, her usual cure for boredom. Without Siroc there, she’d be able to get a lot done, and give him a nice surprise when he returned from patrol. After checking the corridor, she opened the door and paused again, hand hovering over the gas switch, vision of fireballs dancing through her head. She decided to make do with the overcast sunlight streaming through the windows and light some candles.

They did little more than define the shadows cast by towering piles of books and shifting paper landslides. Elaborately haphazard constructions of glassware barely glinted, but here and there metal gleamed off models and instruments. A fine layer of chalk dust covered everything, especially thick beneath the blackboards, while soot filled the forge, heavy with old coal. Jacqueline took a deep breath and rolled up her 

sleeves.

It was just like home, where she’d cleaned when she didn’t want to think or was tired of crying, when Gerard wouldn’t duel with her or another boy had made his intentions known to her father. She began on a bookshelf near the door, removing beakers, tubes, and the odd teacup, knocking dust onto the floor and standing books upright. She filled the space this left with books from workbench piles, and Jacqueline shifted the equipment to the now-empty benches, piling the crockery by the door. 

She moved around the room this way until the things stood in what she hoped were their proper places, and then set to work on the snowdrifts of paper, arranging the stacks as they might have been originally, into piles that looked more or less related. This was more miss than hit, as Jacqueline couldn’t read the contents, and, she thought, probably wouldn’t have understood them if she had been able to.

Even though she’d left the chalkboards alone and hadn’t touched the loft, Jacqueline was nearly wading through the dust by the time she’d worked her way over to the forge. It, at least, she could deal with competently. New coal replaced the spent, as well as most of the soot, and though she itched to light it into life, she resisted.

After searching for and finding an Erlenmeyer flask full of what was probably water, she sprinkled it around to settle the dust and set about driving it into a pile with a broom she’d unearthed behind the forge. Retrieving what might once have been a wastebasket, she set about shoveling the debris inside. Back to the door, she heard it open, and craned her neck to see d'Artagnan stick his head inside.

“Well, I like what you’ve done with the place,” he said, checking the corridor behind him. “Mind if I come in?”

“Yes.” Jacqueline continued sweeping.

“Jacques, please!” he hissed, desperation contorting face and voice. “Captain Duval is after my blood!” And indeed, the sound of a limping gait and the tap of a cane echoed down the hall.

Jacqueline grinned and picked up the overflowing bin. “Serves you right.” Opening the door, she shoved it into his arms. “Take care of that for me, would you?” And, with an angelic smile, she closed the door in his face, holding the knob and pushing against his frantic rattling. The thumping drew nearer, and then stopped.

She heard d'Artagnan clear his throat. “Hello, sir. You’re looking well.”

“I can’t say the same for you, d'Artagnan. Perhaps that’s why you couldn’t be bothered to appear at muster this morning: you were sick?”

Again the throat clearing and a thud as d'Artagnan set the bin down. “I feel fine, sir.”

“Good, because I hear the dungeons need another thorough cleaning. I think you’re well enough to start on that bright and early tomorrow morning.”

Jacqueline laughed so hard she nearly missed d'Artagnan’s mumbled “Yes, sir.”

When she could stand upright again, she looked around with satisfaction at the laboratory, as organized as she could get it without Siroc’s input. It was certainly clean. Grinning, she pulled a stool over to last night’s chalkboard and began to study the alphabet.

She was just thinking of taking a lunch break when the door opened again and Siroc came in. Three steps into the room his expression went from preoccupied to horrified. “Jacques? What—”

She levered herself up and gestured at the room, smiling encouragingly. “Place needed a good cleaning. Thought I’d help.”

“You- you-” he closed his eyes in incredulity for a moment, and then looked around again, his expression growing more pained by the minute. “You put all the books back on the shelves! My experiments! And my papers!”

Jacqueline’s smile evaporated as he moved around the room, touching things compulsively. “I didn’t break anything or throw anything away.”

Brows drawn, Siroc frowned at the carefully arranged models, lips pressed tightly together, and then at Jacqueline. She shrugged helplessly, sheepish without knowing why, and tried to hang onto the fact that she hadn’t done anything wrong.

“I had a system here, and now I won’t be able to find anything!” He slammed a fist down on a workbench, making the glassware jump.

“Siroc, I-” She stopped, unsure whether to apologize or argue, not really wanting to do either.

“Jacques, when I said I needed an assistant, this wasn’t what I meant,” he explained, now more exasperated than angry.

Opening her mouth to explain that that wasn’t why she’d done it, that she’d only meant to help and be nice and say thank you, Jacqueline stopped, wondering at the masculinity of such statements. She could only look at Siroc and hope, as she had the night before, that her eyes would convey the meaning.

It didn’t work. He tossed a lock of hair out of his eyes and stared around once more, expression as blank as glass. “Go. Just go.” 

Jacqueline fled, on the verge of tears, and did not look back. 

Chapter Three: Worth Thy Pains

Stalking down the hallway of Musketeer headquarters, Jacqueline thought about going for a run so she wouldn’t have to think, but the rain had begun again in earnest, so she retrieved her sword from her room and headed for the gymnasium. There she found d’Artagnan, half lounging, half sulking, watching a Musketeer whose name she did not know trounce one whose name was either Thomas or Thierry. Wiping her eyes surreptitiously, she shucked off her jacket, unsheathed her sword, and 

began to stretch, almost happy again.

The two others finished their bout and flopped down on the edge of the mats, knowing they were in for a show if these two chose to duel. 

They did. Jacqueline stepped into the arena, giving d'Artagnan the uncut version of his usual smirk, which he returned half-heartedly. They circled each other for bare seconds before closing, locking hilts in a corps-á-corps almost immediately, and pushing away once more.

Jacqueline fought left-handed to save her shoulder, glad that Gerard, somewhat ambidextrous himself, had practiced both hands with her, since she hated to give d'Artagnan too much of an advantage in anything. Winning or losing did not really matter to her, but she was determined not to be beaten in a careless, stupid way at the very beginning. Not by d'Artagnan.

Jacqueline had noticed that he tended to pair off only with opponents he knew he could beat, and so the two had not dueled seriously in public since she’d first joined the Musketeers. She had grudging respect for d'Artagnan’s laid-back, technically perfect swordsmanship, since his technique was diametrically opposed to her own, a combination of instinct and ten years’ trial and error. She wondered idly if his father had taught him to fence—until a well-aimed riposte broke through her guard.

“Touché.” D'Artagnan danced back. Jacqueline followed, grimacing, taking the offensive, and scored her own corresponding hit. Another would have followed if he hadn’t beaten her blade aside.

She ducked away from his fancy double riposte, which kept her tiring arm from having to parry, spinning around and darting under his guard. “Touché.” 

“I’ll let you have that one, since there aren’t any cows around this time.” 

Grinning, punctuating each word with a blow to her blade or an attempt at her person, d'Artagnan advanced.

Jacqueline, wary but taking her cue from her opponent’s behavior, had hitherto been fighting solely with her sword and not employing any unorthodox techniques: fencing by the book, something most of the younger Musketeers did only when under Captain Duval’s close supervision. She had, however, given some thought to the advantages she had, being female fighting males. There weren’t many, just one large one. D'Artagnan could not have known how lucky he was when her boot 

connected only with his knee.

Something stretched entirely too tightly in Jacqueline had broken at his comment, as though she had been able to shrug off the patronizing and backhanded compliments until that moment, but no longer. D'Artagnan stumbled, and Jacqueline danced forward, blade flashing. She saw his eyes go wide and then seem to say If you want to play that way, all right. And then it was just like the first day.

He somersaulted forward, arms wide to tackle her shins. She cracked him 

across the head with her rapier hilt. He rolled sideways and to his feet, barreling into another corps-á-corps and using his greater strength to force her back against the wall. Grunting, she brought her knee up, but he was ready and spun away into a guard.

Jacqueline pushed off the wall, glaring at d'Artagnan, who smirked and leaned on his sword like a walking stick. “All right there, Jacques?”

She ran at him and he dodged, but her charge had been a feint and she spun to face him once more. D'Artagnan tried to back her against the wall again, and she deliberately tangled their elaborate basket hilts together, aiming a punch at his nose. He caught her fist with his free hand and they grappled for a moment, blades pressed between their bodies, until a hand on each of their shoulders pulled them apart.

Jacqueline bit her lip so she wouldn’t scream: the shoulder Ramon had grabbed had been her right. “Take it easy! Be glad I wasn’t the Captain, or you’d both be cleaning the dungeons.” He stared from one grinning, panting combatant to the other. “Do I have to make you two shake hands?” 

D'Artagnan dropped his sword and held out his hand diffidently. Jacqueline, shrugging, did the same and took it. He rolled her knuckles in his grip, and she shoved the palm of her other hand into his nose. Ramon said something rude in Spanish and pried them apart once more.

Jacqueline caught her breath as he dragged d'Artagnan away. It had been a good scrap, the kind she and Gerard used to have once in a while, when pent-up tension and bad feeling needed a physical outlet. A good row, with swords or without, usually broken up by their exasperated father, and things would be all right between them for a month or so. She hoped it would work in a similar way with d'Artagnan, that he’d get the message and start treating her like one of the guys.

Their two spectators had become two dozen, and were only now leaving grudgingly. Ramon was right, she thought. It’s a wonder Captain Duval didn’t hear us. Pushing hair out of her eyes, she went to wash.

Jacqueline had, out of necessity and a wish to be clean, developed a bathing routine that involved neither d'Artagnan’s hot springs nor the public baths adjacent to Musketeer headquarters. What it ‘did’ involve was heating water and hauling buckets, and ultimately a lot of lukewarm water and strange looks from the other trainees, but Jacqueline felt that the pros outweighed the cons: if she had acquired a reputation for eccentricity, it still had to compete with the fact that she’d out-fenced the son of the great d'Artagnan on her first day, and finessed her way into the corps shortly thereafter.

No servants or silk sheets, Captain Duval had said that day, and he hadn’t exaggerated. Though damp and more or less clean, Jacqueline was exhausted by the time she’d finished emptying the buckets in the courtyard and mopping up the water she’d spilled inside. Finally, barefoot and in her shirtsleeves, ignoring the studying she should be doing and the pain in her shoulder, Jacqueline fell into bed and a restless sleep, though it was not yet three in the afternoon.

She dreamed in a confusing hodgepodge of silent images, keeping one ear open. Even so, it took a couple minutes for the knocking to register. 

“Jacques? Can I come in?” 

With the thick door muffling the voice, Jacqueline couldn’t tell who stood outside. Even so, she bounded up horizontal and landed vertical, trying to yank on her pants and scrape her hair out of her eyes at the same time. Tucking in her shirt, Jacqueline realized too late that she’d forgotten to do anything about her chest. She looked down and sighed, blousing out the linen to cover what little nature had given her. After dashing a handful of water on her face and wiping it on her sleeve, she pulled the door open.

Siroc stood there, looking decidedly uncomfortable. “Did I wake you?” he wanted to know, eyes traveling down her disheveled uniform and frowzy hair.

Jacqueline crossed her arms over her chest. “Yes. No. Not really.” She pushed a stray lock behind her ear and stared at him. “Did you want something?” Like to yell at me some more.

“No. Yes. Not really.” He looked down, and his hair flopped into his eyes. He pushed it back, but continued to gaze at a point somewhere between his boots and her bare feet.

Jacqueline took a deep breath and made what she felt was a great concession to peace and good will. “I can help you mess up your lab again, if you want.”

He laughed a little at that. “No.” He had actually done quite a bit toward that end himself, but did not think it tactful to say so. “Thank you,” he said, looking up, eyes warm and brown and saying more than his voice could, “for sweeping, and cleaning the forge, and-” a painful admission- “organizing things.”

“I didn’t break anything, or throw anything away,” Jacqueline said, as she had before.

“No, you didn’t,” he admitted, raking his hair back again. It had grown, Jacqueline noticed, a bit shaggy, probably longer than was strictly regulation to not have tied back.

“I was just trying to help, Siroc, all right? Because you’re helping me.” And that was as much as the part of her brain slowly learning to be male would let her verbalize.

It was enough. He nodded. “If you want to work on the alphabet some more, we can. I’ve left a solution precipitating, so there’s not much more I can do.” Until I reassemble the distillation apparatus you dismantled.

Jacqueline thought about saying many things. Siroc, I’m dead where I stand. Siroc, I can’t move my arm. Siroc, you really don’t have to make it up to me. But what she did say was, “All right. Just a minute,” and sat heavily on the bed to struggle one-handed into stockings and boots.

Leaning on the doorjamb, Siroc looked around the room from under his eyelashes and tried to look like he wasn’t. It was not, strictly speaking, empty. There was a locked chest at the foot of the bed and a 

chair and a desk and a washstand, and since the room was quite small this meant it was quite full. But it felt empty and unmarked by its occupant’s personality. Even his own room was an overflow of his laboratory. Perhaps the only addition here was a heavy blue comforter now in disarray on the bed; Jacques had changed very little of this place, and Siroc wondered about this. 

Jacqueline didn’t let him wonder long. The room was a mess, and it was personal space, and she wanted to get both of them out of it as soon as possible. First, however, she had to get herself up off of the bed. 

The cot’s mattress had been badly used in the past; now the springs had a tendency to bow in the middle. Jacqueline had gotten used to sleeping around it, but levering herself off it while every muscle in her body screamed at her to lie back down, her shoulder loudest of all, was another prospect.

Sparing her right arm, she tried to lever herself up with the left. As it had yet to recover from the duel, this attempt met with limited success. Teeth gritted, she scooted forward, trying to work up a bit of momentum. The bed moved with her. 

She’d just steeled herself to use both arms when Siroc, who had been watching her predicament, stepped forward and held out a hand. Jacqueline took it. With her right hand. He pulled before she could snatch it back. 

She yelled, the pain stripping her throat raw, and her only consolation as she fell back on the bed moaning was that what burst out had not been a girlish scream.

Siroc winced and leaned over her, chewing his bottom lip, caught in the predicament of all bystanders in medical crises: how to help without hurting the victim more. “Um-” he began. 

Jacqueline sat up. “I’m all right. It’s just sprained, I think. You don’t happen to have invented any kind of medicine that miraculously relieves pain, have you?”

“No, but that’s an excellent idea.” He thought about it a moment. “I’ll get right on it once I’ve finished the miracle cleanser.”

Jacqueline didn’t ask, only half-rolled off the bed and followed Siroc out.

Chapter Four: Of Thee I Will Believe

Jacqueline stared down at the paper. The first letter of the first word of the first sentence was an A. The next one was an N. Of this much she was sure. The rest of the letters marched across the paper in random groups she knew must be words, but she could not read them. Blinking away tears of frustration as the instructor droned on about time and restrictions, Jacqueline tried again to make sense of the test. The third letter was an S, but as she tried to put a name to the fourth, it began to move across the page. The rest of the letters were moving too, swirling, merging, until she could no longer recognize a single one.

She raised her hand and waited for the proctor to call on her. “Sir, I think there’s something wrong with my test.”

The letters coalesced as he strode over and picked up the booklet, holding it up so the rest of the room could see. The young men around Jacqueline began to snicker, and then to laugh outright, their mockery filling the room. Shoving her chair back, she tried to push through the throng of desks to the door, but before she reached it, many hands had seized her and begun to tear at her uniform….

Jacqueline opened her eyes in the darkness and lay frozen in bed, trying not to shiver in the sweat-soaked, swiftly cooling sheets. Steeling herself, she threw them off and rolled over, hissing as her weight fell on her shoulder. It began to throb, and she knew she’d never get back to sleep, even though she’d only gone to bed a few hours before. The afternoon’s nap and her shoulder contrived to keep her from sleep, even though she’d worked with Siroc past dark, rebuilding his distillery as he taught her the sounds of the alphabet. 

It was so very early in the morning that “late at night” wasn’t quite over. Jacqueline sat up carefully and thought about going for a walk or a ride. And then she thought about saddling a horse one-handed. A walk it was, then. She dressed slowly and padded down the hallway, boots in one hand, knowing that if she woke Captain Duval, a notoriously light sleeper whose room was right next to the door, he would not be inclined to leniency, and she’d be in the dungeons with d’Artagnan and a mop.

A thin line of gaslight lit the hallway as she turned the corner, still shining through the ajar lab door. Either Siroc had forgotten to turn out the light, or he was still at work. Jacqueline suspected the latter, and stuck her head in the door to tactfully suggest he go to bed.

At first glance the room appeared empty, but as Jacqueline reached for the gas switch, a soft snoring reached her ears. She looked around again, and spotted him behind the workbench. Siroc had fallen asleep slumped in a low-backed wooden chair, body limp with exhaustion, hand and apron chalk-streaked, a smear of chalk dust on his pert nose. His lashes lay still on pale, calm cheeks, lips moving softly as he breathed, mouth half open with a hint of a smile in the corners, trusting and expectant in sleep. 

Jacqueline sighed as loudly as she dared, half-laughing and half-pitying, and set her boots down. Tiptoeing back to her room, she caught up the quilted blue coverlet she’d bought with part of her first real wages. Back in the lab, she tucked it around Siroc’s sleeping form. Then she turned off the lights, caught up her boots, and left.

Outside, a sliver of moon tried to light the streets and was all but thwarted by scudding clouds. Jacqueline shoved her feet into her boots, shouldered her baldric, and set out down Rue Chenier. 

Of the sprawling city that was Paris, Jacqueline knew well only a rough ellipse, its foci the Palace and Musketeer headquarters. She set out to walk the perimeter, keeping to streets more or less well-lit and avoiding alleys, aware that she was one woman alone, but also that she carried a sword she knew how to use. She was not afraid, but her 

shoulder throbbed and she had a lot to think about. 

The nightmare had shaken her, dream-truth trying to weasel its way into the realm of fact. It’s not for two months, she told herself, and letters do not move once printed. But a knowing dread still lurked at the back of her mind. If I fail, they will throw me out of the Musketeers. Her footfalls made a taunting chorus: “If I fail, if I fail…” 

Jacqueline quickened her pace, destroying the rhythm, and turned along Rue Ferou. 

If she failed…. 

She felt the need to walk the implications out; this she did, until in the effervescent darkness before dawn, Jacqueline felt the knots in her stomach ease, and the pain in her shoulder subside to a dull throb. She would not fail. She had a good teacher, and she would work hard. She would not fail. 

Turning back toward headquarters, she tried to calculate an excuse for Captain Duval if he caught her sneaking back in after a night on the town.

She had just considered going straight to Café Nouveau to seek out the enigmatic baker, Noret, not returning to headquarters at all, when she heard the scuffling in the alley behind her. In the light from the flickering streetlamp, Jacqueline turned, and a burly figure barreled out of the alley and into her, narrowly missing her shoulder. 

“Oh, sir,” he gasped, fawning. “Sir, I can’t tell you how sorry I is.” His eyes widened upon seeing her uniform. “You’re a Musketeer! P’raps you can help. It’s my sister; she’s in a bad way….” He seized her arm and pointed back down the alley. Even in the shadows, Jacqueline could see what was clearly a large man hitting a small woman, probably with the intent to do other things to her, as well.

Jacqueline took off before she could stop to wonder why the man couldn’t help his own sister, though he was close behind her as she sprinted toward the pair. They sprang apart as she neared them, turning to face the sound of footsteps with feral eyes.

What Jacqueline had first thought was a cautionary hand on her left arm became a vice-like grip. Puzzled, she tried to turn, body kicking into self-defense mode, and the man’s arm snaked around her neck. The formerly feuding pair converged on them as she fought the stranglehold, unable to use her half-drawn sword at such close range. “A Musketeer!” the woman crowed. “What’s he got on ‘im?”

Jacqueline had, in point of fact, nothing on her and said as much. But that didn’t stop the woman patting her down and rifling through her pockets while the men held her. Jacqueline held her breath, praying that they wouldn’t feel anything amiss, or notice if they did, and waited until the woman finished before making her move. Going limp in their grip, she kicked backward at the fellow holding her left arm, and tried to draw her sword when he bent down to clutch at his shin, swearing. 

The woman, who had taken the meager contents of Jacqueline’s pockets out to examine them under better light, returned upon hearing the noise. While Jacqueline struggled in the grip of the remaining thug, the woman watched, a bemused smile flitting over her thin, rouged lips, then calmly stepped forward and punched Jacqueline’s right shoulder.

She screamed, feeling something separate in the joint as the arm fell limp by her side. Biting her lip bloody to keep from crying out again, Jacqueline glared out through blurring tears as the woman, smirking, said, “Tie ‘im up, boys. We won’t have no more trouble from this one.” 

“Not from him, but you will from me.” All four looked up to see a figure silhouetted in the mouth of the alley, hair tousled, sword in hand.

Jacqueline spit out the half-tied gag. “Siroc? Thank God! How-” The second thug’s hand caught her across the face, snapping her head back and splitting her lower lip. Siroc dispatched him with a pistol, drawn in an eye-blink and fired left-handed, as the other two charged him. 

Jacqueline scrambled to her feet to help him, stumbling over the still-warm corpse as she fought to reach the brawl. The remaining man and woman had evaded his blade long enough to get inside his guard and, once inside, the fact they were unarmed did not matter: Siroc couldn’t use his sword. 

Watching the trio of Musketeers whose fourth member she was fast becoming, Jacqueline had noticed that Siroc was the worst fencer of the group, only mediocre by the corps’ standards. But mediocre by Musketeer standards was expert by any others’. Even so, at close range and in the darkness, a rapier was not the ideal weapon.

So he did what Jacqueline had been silently willing him to do: he dropped it and clubbed the man over the head with the still-smoking pistol, leaving the outraged woman to claw at his face. Siroc did not, in keeping with the Musketeers’ Code, make a habit of fighting members of the gentler sex, and now without a choice in the matter was at a loss. He backed away, tripped, and tried in vain to ward her off as she leaped on him.

Jacqueline had no such qualms, however, and ended up yanking the woman bodily off of him by the back of her gown, but not before the hoyden had shredded the back of his shirt and started in on his back. 

Struggling one-armed with the bundle of furious energy that had formerly been her attacker, Jacqueline cried out as the woman hit her shoulder once more. She stumbled backwards, and the woman gathered herself up. With a hiss of invective directed equally at her fallen comrades and the Musketeers, she ran off toward the shadows at the opposite end of the alley. 

Mind filled with bright spangles of pain, Jacqueline slumped against the clammy wall, too dazed to even think of going after her assailant. Siroc retrieved his sword, laid the pistol down and knelt beside her. “The shoulder?”

“Yes,” Jacqueline spoke carefully around her split lip, spitting blood. “How did you find me?” The knot on the back of her head had begun to 

throb, and the parts of her body that did not ache gently hurt actively. 

His fingers probed gently around the joint. “I followed you. I woke up and went to return your blanket.” 

Jacqueline opened her mouth to deny ownership, then realized he must have seen it in her room the day before. She cleared her throat. “Oh, don’t worry about it. Gah!” she hissed, as he hit a hole where none should be.

He sat back on his heels. “That’s dislocated, not broken. Once it’s set it won’t hurt so much.”

“Well, set it then!” Jacqueline groaned. 

“I need better light. We should get back to Headquarters anyway. It’s nearly dawn.”

“Captain Duval,” Jacqueline muttered as he gave her a hand up, “is going to kill me. I’ll try not to mention you.”

“I think he’ll notice.” Siroc twisted to survey the ruin on his back. “That’s the third shirt this month.” 

Under a lightening sky and a rising wind, the bedraggled pair made their way back to headquarters; Jacqueline moving slowly, as every step jarred her shoulder to new heights of agony, Siroc hissing softly whenever the breeze hit his lacerated back. The few people about their business that early gave them strange looks but said nothing. After all, they’d seen the King’s Musketeers in stranger situations.

In the courtyard before the front door Siroc stopped, chewing his bottom lip pensively. Jacqueline, straggling along behind, nearly ran into him. “The Captain’s up,” he muttered, tipping his head at the light gleaming in one of the windows, “which under normal circumstances would mean I’d take the back way.” He glanced at her shoulder. “Can you climb one-handed?”

She started to shrug and then stopped. “I can climb and pitch hay at the same time.”

“Good enough.” Siroc led the way around the building. 

“I didn’t know there was a back way,” Jacqueline commented. 

“Well, there isn’t really. D'Artagnan needed a convenient way to go in and out after curfew without the Captain knowing, and he enlisted my help because the only way into the attic is the trap door in my laboratory. And he needed someone to help him take the hinges off.”

Now more puzzled than before she’d asked, Jacqueline watched him retrieve a ladder that lay innocuously in the rubbish of the alley, as though abandoned by a party of workmen. He carried it around the building and propped it beneath a gable window near the roof. Clambering up, he pulled the shutters open. 

Starting up after him, Jacqueline noticed that the woman in the alley had not been the first to touch Siroc’s back with malice. Through the 

tatters in his shirt, she could see that scars covered his entire back from shoulders to waist. While many had faded to little more than thin white lines, the worst formed thick silver wedges, cutting across the smooth muscles. She thought with some regret that it must have been quite a beautiful back at one time. His skin was fair and fresh, and the lines of bone and muscle were still solid and graceful, the shoulders flat and square-set and the backbone a smooth, straight groove cut deep between the rounded columns of muscle that rose on either side of it.

Looking at this wanton damage, she could not avoid a mental picture of the process that had caused it. She tried not to imagine the muscular arms raised, spread-eagled and tied, ropes cutting into wrists, the sandy head pressed hard against the post in agony; but the marks brought such images all to readily to mind. Had he screamed when it was done, like the man in the square long ago, when her mother had forced her to look away? Jacqueline pushed the thought hastily away as she reached the top of the ladder and let him help her through the window.

Inside, Jacqueline looked around at a tiny, dusty garret, a part of headquarters she hadn’t known existed. Worn, broken chairs and dusty trunks lay scattered around, and the space smelled moldy and sad. Siroc was already kicking open a trapdoor, letting the attached ladder unfold before descending. Shivering, Jacqueline followed.

Once in the lab, he set to work clearing off the largest table with quick, business-like sweeps, muttering to himself. “Lay down,” he ordered, “and let your arm hang off the side.”

Jacqueline obeyed, trying to reassure herself that he knew what he was doing. Her shoulder did not take kindly to letting the arm hang off the side, so she propped herself up on her chest with the other elbow until Siroc came around, touching the dislocated shoulder.

He was chewing his lip again, and looked not at all sure of himself. “I don’t know if this will hurt or not. Do you want something to bite?”

“What do you mean you don’t know if it will hurt or not? Haven’t you ever done this before?” Jacqueline stared up at him.

“Not exactly. I’ve seen it done, though. It did look like it hurt, come to think of it.” He frowned at the memory, shoving unruly, touseled hair out of his eyes. 

“Siroc,” she groaned. “This arm is my life. If I can’t fence…” She glared up at him, trying to hide how scared she was.

“You’ll be able to fence, don’t worry. In a couple of months. Trust me.” And Jacqueline found she did, that the earnest brown eyes convinced her. 

Jacqueline subsided into prone silence on the table as he knelt and began to pull the arm slowly toward the floor, using a strong and steady force. The shoulder protested. Jacqueline gritted her teeth in silence.

After what seemed an interminable while, he let go, and she gasped as the shoulder–there was no other word for it- popped into place. Almost all of the pain ceased. She rolled off the table, flexing experimentally.

“You’ll have to wear it in a sling for a few months, but other-” Jacqueline cut the surprised inventor off with a fierce, unthinking bear hug of pure joy. 

Chapter Five: Such Disguise

After muster, Captain Duval called the two tragically disheveled cadets aside. He had seen them sneak in late, but was inclined to sympathize rather than censure in the face of Jacqueline’s swollen mouth and barely concealed sling, and Siroc’s lacerated face.

“I don’t want to hear that you two were fighting,” he began, once the office door closed.

The two exchanged glances. “Well, it was a fight, sir,” Siroc said, careful with the truth.

“But not between us,” Jacqueline was quick to add.

The Captain rolled his eyes. “Explain, Leponte.”

Jacqueline did, slowly, to save her lip and because she and Siroc hadn’t had time to collaborate on a story. She began with the trick plea for help, skirting the ambush, and ended with her at the thug’s mercy. “And 

that’s when Siroc came in,” she finished, glancing at him.

His Adam’s-apple bobbed painfully as he swallowed, and the tale of the rest of the rescue came out in a barely controlled flow of words, simple and wrenchingly honest. He doesn’t think he did anything heroic, Jacqueline realized. He doesn’t like to kill people.

Do I? she wondered. She had run her father’s murderer through, in shock and feral rage, had fought and killed the Cardinal’s Guards, and would certainly kill Mazarin himself if presented with an opportunity. But would she enjoy it? Perhaps, she decided. She’d have to wait and see.

Captain Duval absorbed their stories, expression unreadable, and then sat back in his chair. “What happened to your arm, Leponte?”

Jacqueline cleared her throat. “Just a sprain, sir. It’ll be back to normal in no time.” She cut her eyes at Siroc, daring him to contradict her.

“It did get sprained, sir,” he confirmed, and Jacqueline relaxed. But then he went on. “He dislocated it in the melee, though. I’ve set it, but it needs to be immobilized for at least a month.”

The Captain, to Jacqueline’s horror, seemed inclined to take Siroc’s word on this. “Then I’m relieving you of duty for that period of time, Leponte. Not a punishment, you understand, just a precaution. I need someone here to keep d’Artagnan humble.”

Jacqueline managed a pained smile. “Thank you, sir.”

“And both of you get some sleep. You look terrible.” He dismissed them with a wave and, bowing slightly in acknowledgement, the two took their leave. 

Once out in the corridor, Jacqueline turned on her erstwhile rescuer and physician. “Why did you do that?” It was the kind of thing she’d have expected from d’Artagnan.

He shrugged. “If you use your arm before it’s healed you’ll damage it permanently, or at least weaken it. Do you want it to hurt whenever you fence for the rest of your life?”

Jacqueline opened her mouth to say that she didn’t care, but shut it abruptly, because she did; a part of her knew she should be grateful. “I’m going to bed,” she muttered, and pushed past him, stalking down the hall to her room. Siroc stared after her until the door slammed, then shook his head and turned into his lab.

The bed protested as Jacqueline dropped onto it, kicking her boots off and groaning. “Relieved of duty for a month,” she muttered, trying to pull her jacket off around the sling. She hadn’t thought to ask whether she’d be paid during that time. Sighing, prepared for the worst, she calculated how long it’d be before she had to dip into her savings, or pawn part of the lady’s wardrobe she was slowly collecting.

Private Leponte had acquired a reputation as quite a ladies’ man with the dressmakers around Paris- ladies about his size and measurements. 

The lace cloak had been Jacqueline’s first purchase. It was a delicate, ethereal garment so utterly beyond a farmer’s daughter that the thought of owning it had shocked her at first. But she had gone into the shop to ask the price. That had shocked her too. Feigning disinterest, she had returned to headquarters and counted out her savings. She had gone back to the shop and haggled with the tailor until the price paid was nearly half of what he’d quoted her before. And now the cloak lay locked away in her trunk, a talisman of her femininity.

Thinking of the cloak, Jacqueline threw her tangled jacket into the corner with more force than necessary. She knew she should undress and sleep, but didn’t want to bother, or to see the barely faded contusions covering her body beneath newer, blossoming bruises from the activities of the night before. She hurt everywhere with a dull, throbbing ache that pounded at her bones with every heartbeat.

Something she had said, half-jokingly, to Siroc the afternoon before floated to the top of her mind. The memory of his serious answer made her lever herself off the bed and pad barefoot down the hall to his lab for the second time that day.

As she had thought, he was there, tinkering with the distillation apparatus. He looked up as she leaned against the doorframe. “Captain Duval told you to get some sleep.”

“He told you the same thing,” Jacqueline retorted, and then decided she’d better be nicer. “How’s the, um, miracle pain reliever coming along?”

“It’s not.” He frowned at the length of copper tubing in his hand. “The distillery isn’t efficient enough to reduce the tincture of willow bark and allow me to isolate the nerve-deadening compound.”

Jacqueline latched on to the part of the sentence she’d understood. “Willow bark tea? Is there any left?” 

“It’s over there. Help yourself.” He pointed to a container simmering over a blue alcohol flame and went back to his adjustments.

Jacqueline limped over and peered into the pot, where bits of twig bobbed gently in a murky brown liquid. It appeared to be the same stuff her mother had drunk for headaches and cramps. Slightly suspicious, she looked around for something to drink out of. Checking to make sure Siroc wasn’t looking, she grabbed an empty beaker, wiped it on her shirttail, and dipped it full of tea, trying to avoid the bits of bark while not scalding her fingers.

Taking her makeshift teacup, she sat down a companionable distance from Siroc, not wanting to make off with both his tea and his equipment. He didn’t notice. Jacqueline had noticed that he seemed to go somewhere else when he worked, forgetting everything around him except the task at hand, yet able to reach into the mess of tools on the workbench and find the correct one without ever taking his eyes from the machine. Looking around, she realized that he’d probably never leave the lab if not dragged out by his friends or patrol duty.

Jacqueline sipped her cooling tea, grimacing at the bitterness. It 

tasted odd, sweeter than her mother’s, and she hoped he hadn’t kept arsenic or another poisonous chemical in the beaker. But if she died at least she wouldn’t have to worry about not being able to get up out of the chair. She took another long drink, feeling better already. 

A warm, floating sensation suffused her entire body, spreading from her stomach upwards, erasing aches and pains in its wake. Not unlike, Jacqueline thought, almost giggling, the time she and ten-year-old Gerard had sampled vintages from their grandfather’s wine cellar. She was so tired…

Siroc looked up, to add a belated postscript to his offer of the tea. “I’ve included a mild sedative—oh.” Putting down a section of the dismantled steam chamber, he took the empty beaker from her limp hand before it could drop and smash. He crossed to the corner by the door and retrieved the coverlet folded there, the one she had covered him with, the one he had not returned, and spread it over her. 

He did not look closely at his sleeping comrade. Or, if he did, Siroc saw only what he expected to be there-- not what truly was, not what he would have seen if he’d examined the sleeping woman as he did his books and machines. If he had, he would have seen to her heart, as he did to theirs, and he would not have gone back to tinkering with the distillery. 

Bright midmorning sun shone through the windows, waking Jacqueline and making her squint. Siroc, she noticed, was gone. Stiff but rested, she pushed herself out of the chair. The tea and whatever else had been in it had worked; she thought she might possibly be able to walk and perhaps fence without pain now.

Her stomach growled as she stretched experimentally. Heading to her room to wash up and dress, she decided to visit the cafe, where she could both have breakfast and seek out Noret, for whom she had some questions. 

She felt that stepping into the kitchen and asking for him might not be the most prudent course of action, so, after ordering coffee and pain au chocolat, she sat where she could watch the kitchen door, ready to accost the baker should he appear. 

She didn’t have to wait long. Jacqueline had consumed half the coffee and most of the pastry, and was absorbed in fiddling with her sling in an attempt to make it marginally more comfortable, when she felt someone slide into the booth opposite her. Looking up, she saw Noret, flour on his cheek and batter on his jacket. “I thought you’d be back,” he said, grinning. “Mind if I join you?”

Jacqueline, her mouth full, shook her head. He went on. “I owe you an apology for yesterday. Chef can be…temperamental.” Large gray eyes twinkled at Jacqueline. “He came in this morning, stinking of brandy, and started snoring as soon as he sat down. I saw you come in, but I had to wait for my éclairs to finish baking. What happened to your arm?”

“A fight,” Jacqueline said shortly. “What did you mean, yesterday, that you were glad there was another one?” She had decided that bluntness was both masculine and expedient.

“Oh, yes.” Noret looked down a moment. “Has that been worrying you?” He leaned across the table, straight-faced. “I meant, of course, that I’m glad there’s another girl.”

Jacqueline’s heart paused, and then began to thud again, pretending along with the rest of her that she did not know what he meant. “Where?” 

Noret heaved a theatrical sigh. “Here,” he said, proffering a small cylindrical package. “A token of my faith and good will.”

Jacqueline looked down, nonplussed. “Socks?”

“Must I explain everything?” he muttered. “Look,” Noret lowered his voice, though in the busy Café no one could overhear them, “you’re pretty good. You don’t bulge where you shouldn’t bulge. But you don’t bulge where you should bulge, either. Lower down. So, the socks.”

Feeling her face grow warm, Jacqueline blinked. Was he guessing, or certain? Did he mean to blackmail her, or was he, possibly, trying to help? “I beg your pardon, m’sieur--”

“M’sieur? M’sieur! Are you blind?” Eyes closed either in disbelief or desperation, Noret slouched in the booth, raking a hand through his hair so that it stood up, making him resemble nothing so much as a ruddy-faced, blond hedgehog.

Jacqueline stared at him for a moment, and as she did the world seemed to move around her, taking a quarter-turn and falling neatly into place. She saw the face before her graced with rouge, framed with longer hair, and smiling sweetly instead of grimacing at her. She blinked, and the mirage disappeared. The femininity, however, remained in the eyes and the structure of the face- reminding Jacqueline of what she saw in the mirror every morning.

Noret saw the realization dawn in her eyes. “I’m glad,” she said, voice heavy with irony, “that there’s another one.”

“Oh,” said Jacqueline faintly. “Yes. I thought I was the only one.” But now it seemed silly to assume there could not be other women who lived as men, for protection or opportunity.

“You’re not.” Noret smiled slightly. “There aren’t many. But there are some.”

“Oh,” Jacqueline said again, feeling naïve beside this girl who must be three years her junior. “How long have you-” she flicked her hand, not wanting to voice something as bald as pretended to be male.

“Two years.” Jacqueline suppressed a whistle. “My name is Marthe. I’ve heard the others call you Jacques. Is it Jacqueline, then?”

Jacqueline nodded and, unwilling to give her true surname, lest Noret be perceptive concerning things such as wanted posters, stuck a hand across the table, saying in her best baritone, “Jacques Leponte.”

Grinning broadly now, she took it. “Etienne Noret.” 

If the café hadn’t been so noisy, someone would surely have heard them giggle.

Chapter Six: Very Worth His Service

Jacqueline stayed at the Café until late in the afternoon. She and Marthe remained at their table for the better part of two hours, when the baker said she thought she’d better start the evening’s bread. The pair moved into the kitchen, talking above the chef’s snores, throwing dough back and forth, and generally enjoying themselves. Jacqueline helped out as well as she could with one arm, and in return received a haphazard lesson in baking. Once in the kitchen Marthe never stopped moving: mixing, kneading, sliding batches of dough into ovens and pulling out shining golden loaves in every shape imaginable.

She also maintained a steady stream of conversation, pausing once in a while to offer Jacqueline a buttered roll or slice for her approval, or to ask impatiently for a few more eggs or a clean side towel. Jacqueline kept up, having the most fun she could remember in a long time; besides the free food, always welcome to a penniless Musketeer, it felt so good to speak freely with another girl-who wasn’t trying to flirt with her. Jacqueline talked about her family, or lack of one, and listened to Marthe’s tales about her domineering father and six younger brothers and siblings.

When the chef showed signs of stirring, Marthe piled Jacqueline’s arms full of baguettes and brioche and bundled her out the back door, joining 

her a moment later carrying a brown paper package. “These are for- well, I don’t know his name. He doesn’t come in as often as the rest of the cadets, but when he does, he sits by himself, or with the three of you. Tall, brownish hair, brandy-brown eyes?”

“Oh, Siroc,” Jacqueline mumbled, trying to juggle everything. 

“Oh, Siroc,” Marthe sighed, in quite a different tone, and went on before Jacqueline could inquire. “Whenever I set out a tray of strawberry napoleons, he comes over and stares at them, like he’s trying to eat them with his eyes, but he never buys one. So give him these. Say they were surplus or something.” 

“Are they?” Jacqueline wanted to know.

“No, I baked them specially. I do hate to see a person go away hungry.” She balanced the package on top of the bread.

“I don’t think that’s going to happen anytime soon,” Jacqueline muttered, as a bellow of “Noret!” came from inside. With a wave and a grin, Marthe disappeared through the door.

Jacqueline smuggled her edible treasure trove into Headquarters, depositing the bread on the table in the common room beside a kettle of stew someone had recently pulled off the hearth, meeting no one. On her way to deliver the package of “surplus” to Siroc’s lab, however, a trio of grimy figures accosted her, vaguely recognizable beneath the dirt as her comrades. “Where have you been?” she asked, looking them up and down.

“Where have you been?” d’Artagnan retorted, as Ramon replied that they’d been helping him clean the dungeons and Siroc muttered something about a miracle cleanser.

Jacqueline chose to address d’Artagnan, fixing a commiserating smile on her face. “I’ve missed out on all the fun, then.” She clapped him on the shoulder as she went past, balancing the napoleons on her sling as she did. “Stew and bread on the table, if you’re hungry,” she called over her shoulder to the other two, jerking her thumb back toward the common room, and she could almost see Ramon begin to salivate.

Jacqueline continued down the hall, unsure quite why she hadn’t given Siroc the napoleons then. They weren’t even from her, but Marthe’s interest in him had rankled, for reasons Jacqueline could not comprehend. So she put the subject out of her head, persuading herself that she’d wanted to be sure that, since Siroc was so fond of the pastries, Ramon did not scarf all of them. Jacqueline knew he would if given half a chance, Siroc being easily distracted at table by a word or an idea, and prone to leaving his food totally untouched at the end of a meal.

Jacqueline, stuffed with tidbits from the Café, was not hungry herself, so she decided to give d’Artagnan a bit of time to calm down and clean up before she joined her friends for dinner. Sitting carefully on the bed, she unknotted her sling and laid it aside so she could get her floury jacket off. It would have to be washed, Jacqueline decided, glad she didn’t have to get it to the laundress’s before muster tomorrow.

Moving her right arm in slow circles, the only exercise Siroc had proscribed, Jacqueline stripped the tie from her hair with the other hand and shook out the chestnut mane. Unbound, it fell nearly to the small of her back. She wondered if she should cut it—and then recoiled violently from the idea, irrationally repulsed. When she was growing up, everyone had always told Jacqueline that she had her mother’s hair. Jacqueline had liked this, since her flowing hair was almost the only thing she could remember about her mother.

Tying it back up, she decided that if d’Artagnan made a snide remark about it, or wisps got in her eyes when she fenced, that she’d club it back instead of merely pulling it into a horsetail. Not that I’ll be doing much fencing for a while, she thought, knotting the sling into place, an awkward task with only one hand. Catching up the napoleons, she ducked out, meaning to leave the package in the lab while Siroc was absent.

Once in the hall, though, Jacqueline froze. The thud reverberated down the hallway, repeating itself after a moment, coming from the direction of Siroc’s laboratory. Concerned, Jacqueline poked her head in the door to find the still slightly smudgy inventor leaning on the wall beside it. She cleared her throat. “What’s wrong?”

He turned, raising his hand to cover the large red spot on his forehead, ostensibly pushing his hair back. “Oh, it’s the distillery. Mankind has been building them for hundreds of years, and I can’t even manage a minor innovation!”

“Relax.” Jacqueline reached out and squeezed his shoulder. “It’s not worth beating yourself up over.” She nodded toward the mark the wall had left, not quite hiding a smile.

“The problem is distressing for purely personal reasons,” he muttered.

“Then maybe this will cheer you up.” Jacqueline proffered her package. “Café Nouveau was having a sale and, well, a little bird told me you liked strawberry napoleons.”

“You bought me strawberry napoleons,” he said, looking from them to her. 

Jacqueline shrugged, realizing too late that she hadn’t owned up to a particularly manly act.

Siroc stared for a moment more at the packet, while she wondered if she should make a joke, and then he looked up, eyes light. “Thank you very much.” He smoothed his apron as she set them on the table. “Is there something I can do for you?”

Jacqueline thought quickly. ”I, ah, I’d like to borrow a book.”

“You’d like to borrow a book,” he repeated, nonplussed, since she’d only memorized the alphabet a couple days before. But upon seeing the glint in Jacqueline’s eyes, Siroc decided to play along. “I’m afraid my library is limited to science and philosophy,” he said, turning to the shelves. “What kind of book were you looking for?”

“Philosophy,” Jacqueline decided. It sounded marginally less intimidating. “Can you recommend something?” Something with short easy words, and perhaps illustrations? she did not add as she joined him.

Siroc scanned the shelves, tapping his chin speculatively. After a moment’s thought he took down a volume that seemed identical to the rest, holding it for a moment before passing it to her. The gilt-edged leather folio was cradled in his slender artist’s fingers for only a moment but the striking image made Jacqueline feel impossibly gauche and unlettered as she took it in her own calloused, square-fingered hands.

“Sir Francis Bacon’s Essays,” the inventor announced. “There will almost certainly be a selection from Bacon on the Examen.”

“Bacon?” Jacqueline hazarded a guess. “An Englishman?”

Siroc nodded. “The father of modern science. He pioneered the method of inductive investigation- using experiments to verify a hypothesis.” Jacqueline blinked to keep her eyes from glazing over, trying to at least do him the courtesy of paying attention, even if she understood only one word in three. “His program called for a survey of knowledge, separating the genuine from the erroneous and preserving this knowledge as the starting point of future investigations. Bacon’s essays exemplify this: concise formulations of facts that have practical value to man.” 

“In English?” Jacqueline asked when he came up for air.

Slightly deflated, Siroc rolled his eyes. “No, it’s a French translation.”

Feeling a bit better, Jacqueline opened the book at random and began to pour earnestly over it. Siroc watched her, in the middle of a serious moral conflict. He had bought a primer yesterday, a slim volume filled with bright illustrations and simple sentences like “The pig sat in the mud.” and “See the cart, Jean!” He knew that such books were used to teach children to read. He also knew that he had something of a special case on his hands.

His comrade was intensely proud, even worse than d’Artagnan, and several years older than Siroc. And had asked for a book of philosophy. Siroc imagined taking this book from his friend and replacing it with one bearing a pink, smiling rabbit on the cover. He thought about how he would react should such a thing be done to him.

He was, he reflected, something of a special case himself. He could not remember being taught to read, or a time when he could not look at a word without hearing it in his head. So he was perhaps not the best person to teach Jacques to read. But Jacques had asked him, and Siroc had taken up the project with his usual interest and, with his usual tenacity, would see it through. 

So, leaving the reader in the drawer, he crossed to Jacqueline, turning the book right side up in her hands and said, “Start with ‘Of Studies.’ It concerns the value of reading.” And, more importantly, it’s short, and the language is simple.

And Jacqueline smiled, leaning closer to look at the page he indicated, 

thinking that she could perhaps do this after all.

Chapter Seven: I’ll Serve This Duke

Author’s Note: It helps to have read my story ‘Broken Away’ to understand this chapter, but is not necessary. It can be found here: 

~*~

In the depths of the Louvre, Giulio Mazarin sat trimming his fingernails with a slim Florentine poniard. As he paid other people to fight for him he had little use for it other than as a letter opener, but he kept it as a memento. It had been a gift from his mentor and predecessor, Armand du Plessis, Duc de Richelieu.

Upon retiring, he had left Mazarin another remembrance as well: a web of spies and informants scattered throughout Europe, concentrated in France and most active in Paris itself. The Cardinal sat at its center like a giant red spider, attuned to any movement on outlying strands that might signal new prey.

For the past few months Mazarin had encouraged his talebearers, through bribes and threats, to direct their attentions toward the Musketeers. The corps was the King’s personal regiment and so Mazarin took a special interest in their demise. The news he had received so far had been surprisingly bland: a brawl here, a cuckolded husband there, a bar tab left unpaid, a maid’s petticoat stolen. The charges against the 

musketeers could have been brought against men in a dozen companies in the city. Nothing useful. 

It had been Mazarin himself who discovered the piece of the puzzle that made him redouble his efforts. It had happened accidentally and-he liked to think- serendipitously A personal attempt on his part to implicate two of the cadets in an extortion scheme, and therefore humiliate the entire corps, had backfired, though he had managed to finesse the dénouement to the king. But on the barge supposedly carrying stolen gold, Mazarin had found gold in quite a different form: a marvelous underwater boat and its creator… whom he recognized all too well.

Someone he had searched for the better part of three years had been hiding directly under his nose. Mazarin had of course heard of the cadet called Siroc, in connection with d'Artagnan’s brat, that ridiculous rhyming Spaniard, and the newcomer called Leponte. But until he’d seen his face Mazarin had not connected the boy with his runaway inventor.

So Mathieu has taken refuge with the Musketeers, Mazarin mused, remembering with chagrin the somewhat bald overtures he’d made the boy the day of the barge incident and again a few weeks later in his personal offices. Surprise had prompted the first, impatience the second, and as both had been rebuffed resolutely and articulately Mazarin knew more subtle methods were called for.

As he contemplated the nature of such methods, a knocking on his study door drew him from his reverie. “Come,” he barked. 

The door edged open, followed by a young Guard, who made him a slightly nervous but razor-sharp bow. “Your Eminence, we are detaining two…persons who claim to have information about the Musketeers.” 

Mazarin rolled his eyes. “Take it down and dismiss them then.”

“Your Eminence-” the young man swallowed- “they say they will speak only to you.”

“Very well.” Mazarin waved a hand. “Send them in.”

The Guard returned a moment later, with three of his fellows, holding between them a frowzy, badly made-up woman and a man sporting a bruised lump on his head. The two made clumsy attempts at obeisance and then stared frankly at Mazarin. Mazarin stared back.

When they seemed disinclined to volunteer any information, he said, “I was told you had information concerning certain of the Musketeers. I see that was incorrect. Take them away.”

The man and woman both spoke at the same time, but he trailed off to let her continue. “It wasn’t incorrect, Your Worshipfulness. We do. Me and Jock had a little run-in with two of ‘em about a week ago. Friend of ours, Boisy, was with us, but, well, he ain’t here to tell the tale, if you take my meanin’.”

“I don’t,” Mazarin snapped. “What happened?”

The woman pushed a clump of hair behind her ear, shooting Jock a 

quelling look as he opened his mouth. “Well, me and Boisy and Jock was out at night, since we hadn’t got any place to go, and there wasn’t anyone about to take- I mean, ask a bit of help of. So me and Boisy got to arguing a bit, like, on account of he wanted to go west and I wanted to go east.”

“Yeah, and I left and kind of bumped into this young fellow when I come out of the alley,” Jock piped up, edging away from the woman. “And he was a Musketeer. And I tells him my sister’s in trouble. And she is my sister, sir. Probably.”

Mazarin waved the innocently earnest assurance aside, scowling. “And was she in trouble?” He’d had just about enough of this creatively interpreted truth.

“She might of been,” Jock allowed, pock-marked face creasing in thought. 

His probably-sister moved past the uncomfortably doubtful topic. “We asked him for a bit of help, Your Worshipfulness, and he was very rude! Said we could clear off, and other things I wouldn’t like to repeat in your august presence. And so we decided he might want to make a little donation anyway.”

“And that’s when he kicked me!” Jock pulled up the tattered leg of his trousers to show a yellowing bruise.

“Yes, I can see that he did,” Mazarin said, masking distaste with mock concern. “Put it down now.” 

“And while we was seeing what he had on him- I mean, what he might be able to contribute to our worthy cause- another one of ‘em came up, and shot Boisy,” the woman added indignantly.

Mazarin leaned forward, impatient with their cobbled-together lies. “Another Musketeer?” 

“That’s right. The first one called him Siroc, if memory serves,” the woman confirmed. “Very pretty fellow. Both of them was pretty, come to think of it, and seemed very fond of one another,” she added with a leer.

Filing this information away for further use, Mazarin asked, “Oh? What did the first one look like?”

Brother and sister conferred for a moment. “Oh, about as tall as me,” Boisy said. “Dark hair, parted here, back in a queue. Little beard. Maybe twenty, twenty-five.”

Mazarin ran through his mental index of likely Musketeer cadets. “The other one didn’t happen to call him Jacques, did he? Or Leponte?”

The woman shook her head, smiling like the cat that knows the canary’s about to offer itself for breakfast. “No, Your Worshipfulness, but I think there’s one way you can be sure of getting the right fellow.”

“And what is that?” Mazarin asked solicitously. If this pair of buffoons had murdered the Musketeers in retaliation, he thought, they would find 

themselves being recognized by the number of pieces they were in. 

“Well,” the woman confided, “he’s a she.”

Chapter Eight: Thy Silence

Leaning back against the wall of the gymnasium, d'Artagnan watched Jacqueline dueling left-handed with her shadow. Having just returned from patrol, he’d known she’d be there. She had been there every morning since she’d hurt her shoulder and would be there, he presumed, for two weeks more: the month of her forced vacation.

Jacqueline stood with her back to the morning sun streaming in the high windows, and advanced and retreated, her feet sliding and turning intricately, her sword a blur of thrusts and parries, too fast to follow properly.

Almost every Musketeer at Headquarters had spent some time watching her either covertly or, as d'Artagnan was, with open admiration. Lieutenant d’Orsay, left-handed himself, had even taken her in hand and shown her some techniques peculiar to the left-handed fencer. D'Artagnan had finally begun to pick up some of the disciplined patterns in what Jacqueline was doing. And as he watched it go on and on, he understood something else.

This was more than mere training on the part of someone who’d injured her sword arm. In these relentless, driven repetitions d'Artagnan had begun to see that Jacqueline was masking, as best she could, the emotions rising within herself. D'Artagnan didn’t know what those emotions might be, but he thought he could guess. Every afternoon Jacqueline disappeared into Siroc’s laboratory, shutting the door, not to emerge until long after dark.

D'Artagnan hadn’t been able to observe a change in the inventor, though, except perhaps a tighter guarding, a shielding of the self. D'Artagnan, who had seen him grow from a reclusive, jumpy teenager into a young man 

who spoke and fought with equal confidence, had never seen Siroc with a tighter rein on his heart. And this puzzled him more than Jacqueline’s behavior.

He watched the dark-haired woman going through her systematic drills without fuss or wasted motion of any kind, and when she stopped, bent double and panting, he went over to her and offered her his handkerchief. Jacqueline took it, not looking up to see who offered it, and then straightened, mopping rivulets of sweat from her face. 

“Oh, d'Artagnan.” Her voice went flat as she offered him the damp cloth back, mouth thin, eyes grudgingly grateful.

“Good to see you, too,” he said, smiling. “Haven’t seen much of you lately.”

“Well, you know where to find me.” Jacqueline went to hang up her weighted practice foil, annoyance and frustration evident in tone and voice. “It’s not like I’m going anywhere.” 

D'Artagnan followed her over to the wall. “Yeah, well, I’ve been meaning to talk to you about that. You should take it easy, Jacqueline. Or easier, anyway.”

“I have work to do. The leave wasn’t my idea; you can thank Siroc for that.” He noticed dark smudges under her eyes that hadn’t been there before. When had they appeared? And were they from restlessness and worry, or something less…natural?

Privately wondering what else she could thank Siroc for, d'Artagnan took down a foil of his own. “Funny you should mention Siroc. The two of you’ve been spending an awful lot of time together,” he said, with studied nonchalance 

Jacqueline stared at him, not-quite-scowling. “What are you saying?” 

“Nothing.” He bent to stretch so he wouldn’t have to meet her eyes. “Just wondering what the two of you are up to.” Or down, he did not add; she’d skewer him.

She gave him a skeptical look and lowered her voice. “If you must know, he’s teaching me to read so I can pass the Examen.” The thought of the test, now in less than six weeks, made Jacqueline’s stomach twist, and so she put it out of her head. 

“You don’t know how to read?” was d'Artagnan’s first question. He kept it to himself. “Why didn’t you ask me? I could teach you.”

“D'Artagnan.” Her look reminded him eerily of Captain Duval’s as d'Artagnan tried to convince him that of course the girl leaving his room had been his cousin. He shrugged, but both of them were remembering the last time d'Artagnan had tried to teach anybody anything. He and Ramon had ended up at each other’s throats after half an hour, the cards forgotten. “I prefer someone who doesn’t try to seduce me every five minutes.”

“Oh.” D'Artagnan tried not to look as relieved as he felt. “So he 

doesn’t know you’re a– you know?” He waved his hand, still not looking at her, torn between relief and jealousy.

Jacqueline rolled her eyes. “No, d'Artagnan, he doesn’t. Why do you care?”

“Well, I just thought- two of you spending so much time locked together- I mean, locked in his lab. Anything could happen.” He tried a few passes at the air, rapier flickering in time with his feet.

“No, it couldn’t. You’re the only person who tries something whenever you’re alone with a girl for five minutes. Siroc doesn’t know, and besides, he’s different.” Jacqueline did not feel like explaining to, him, here and now, just how Siroc was different. She didn’t want to sound like a lovesick flirt.

D'Artagnan spun on one heel to face her. “Yes, he is. He’s had a lot of terrible things done to him, before he joined the Musketeers.”

Slightly taken aback by his quiet, serious tone, Jacqueline took a step toward him. “His back?”

D'Artagnan nodded. “His back- and other things. So if he finds out, and you hurt him, I will kill you myself.” The button of his foil danced a foot from her face. 

“He won’t find out,” Jacqueline said, shaken by his utterly matter-of-fact tone. “He’s my friend too, you know.”

“Lovely.” D'Artagnan whisked his foil back, smiling with everything but his eyes. “Glad we had this little chat. Care for a match?”

“No.” Fussing with her sling, Jacqueline crossed to where she had laid her jacket and picked it up. “I’ve got to go wash up. We’re reading Descartes tonight.”

“Sounds fascinating. Have fun.” Jacqueline rolled her eyes and started for the door, still fiddling with the sling, and nearly ran into Ramon, coming in at a half-trot.

“Mail’s here,” he said, sidestepping and holding the bundle out of her reach as she snatched for it. D'Artagnan jogged up, making Ramon hold the letters higher, laughing uproariously at the attempts of his shorter comrades. 

“Patience, amigos, patience!” he gasped as they danced around him.

Jacqueline cut her eyes at d'Artagnan. “Get him.” Ramon ran. The two of them chased him out of the gymnasium and through the corridors, dodging officers and maids with laundry baskets until Ramon spotted a welcome open door and took refuge inside Siroc’s laboratory.

The inventor looked up from a coil of copper tubing as Ramon dodged around a workbench. “Mail?” D'Artagnan and Jacqueline, the definition of hot pursuit, followed shortly. “You can’t do this every month, you know,” he said, reaching for a wrench.

Ramon did not deign to answer, as the other two had cornered him next to a shelf of glassware, still holding the letters out of their reach. Jacqueline, however, had had an inspiration and was tickling the tall Spaniard mercilessly. As he tried to fend her off, d'Artagnan made a flying grab for the letters, dangerously close to a rack of test tubes.

With a sigh of exasperation, Siroc put down his wrench and went to take matters in hand. “You’ll break something,” he muttered, pushing between d'Artagnan and Jacqueline to glare up at Ramon. “Give me the mail,” he ordered, holding out a hand, not amused in the least.

To the surprise of the two watching, the taller man acquiesced, handing the coveted missals over meekly. “Thank you,” Siroc said, and retreated to riffle through them. The other three ranged around him with barely contained impatience.

“One for Ramon- from your sister, I think.” He held it out. “And two for Jacques.”

“Who from?” d'Artagnan wanted to know, smirking.

“From whom.” Siroc corrected, pursing his lips and looking to Jacqueline.

“Mimou,” she said, after a moment, “And Gerard, all the way from America.” She and Siroc shared a grin, hers of accomplishment, his of pride: she’d read the address perfectly, and without any prompting. 

“And three for d'Artagnan,” the inventor said, looking down. “Charlotte in Rousillon, Celeste in Alsace, and- Fredrika? I don’t know her, do I?” 

“Oh no!” d'Artagnan groaned, still smiling broadly. “She was my mother’s upstairs maid. Always used to follow me around. Annoying….” But he snatched the letters anyway.

Siroc looked down. There was still one letter left. He turned it over to see his name on the back. “That’s odd.” The other three exchanged looks; Siroc never got mail. They watched him break the seal and scan the contents.

The blood drained slowly from his face, leaving it the color of his linen shirt. He blinked twice and shook his head as if to clear it. And then he crumpled the letter, shoving it into a pocket. “I’m afraid you’ll have to excuse me,” he said after a moment, voice husky, and steered them politely but firmly toward the door. 

“Who’s it from?” d'Artagnan wanted to know, trying to peer at the letter.

Siroc licked his lips. “Ah, Le Journal des Sciences wants to publish one of my articles on mechanized flight. It’s a very great honor. If you don’t mind, I’d like to be alone.”

Shooing all three of them outside, he shut the door in their inquisitive faces. And then he locked it. 

Chapter Nine: My Wit

Jacqueline, Ramon, and d'Artagnan stood staring at the door that had just been shut in their faces. D'Artagnan broke the stunned silence. “Do you buy that story about his article being published? Because I don’t.”

“He would have been excited about that, and he acted like his family had just died,” Jacqueline put in, trying to look like she wasn’t worried at all.

“His family is already dead,” d'Artagnan said quietly.

Ramon didn’t hear him. He had his thinking face on. “He would have been excited,” he mused. “He’d have made us all sit down while he explained it and drew things on the blackboard.” D'Artagnan nodded, and the two men began to bang on the door and call Siroc’s name.

Jacqueline hung back, thinking. What might be in the letter that was terrible enough to make him oust his three best friends while he dealt with it alone?

Jacqueline’s mother had died of a slow, lingering illness; she and her family had had time to prepare for absence and grief. The waiting had been agony, and Jacqueline hoped she would never have to watch anyone waste away like that ever again. She hoped that she herself would die standing up, sword in hand. But when death came to Phebe Roget, it surprised no one. And her father and Gerard had been there. The Rogets had survived together.

But after Jacqueline had watched her father’s murder there had been no time for thought, only action: she had avenged him, escaped, and then concentrated on rescuing Gerard, moving in a haze of rage and adrenaline. She’d distilled that rage now into a slow, lingering anger that fueled her moment by moment. 

It kept her competing with the stronger, faster male cadets when she had neither strength nor inclination. And it levered her out of bed in the 

morning when her body ached from the last day’s round of what she was about to put it through again. It made her return to Siroc’s lab every night because of what he could teach her, even though it hurt her heart more to look at him each time.

Siroc had been hurt. His family was gone. Had he been running on anger? Jacqueline didn’t think so, and even if he had, she didn’t think that would be enough to carry him through whatever news he had just received. And so she decided that he didn’t need three gruff, back-slapping males scuffing their feet and making threats and trying to help him cope. Maybe he just needed Jacques Leponte, whom he had worked with and fought beside and taught to read. Jacques Leponte who was also Jacqueline Roget, who knew what it was to have bad things happen suddenly, and what it was to be a Musketeer with secrets.

But whether or not Siroc needed her, the bolted door said he emphatically did not want her. So Jacqueline blocked out d'Artagnan’s pounding and Ramon’s cajoling, and thought a moment, remembering an alley and a ladder, and Siroc’s asking her if she could climb one-handed. She left her noisy, well-meaning friends at a clip, sneaking out of Headquarters and around the building.

Maneuvering the ladder into place with only one hand was awkward and she lost her sling in the process, but Jacqueline managed and climbed up, though she nearly lost her balance opening the shutters. Shaken, she spent barely a moment in the attic, but kicked the trapdoor open and descended the unfolding ladder, wondering in what state she would find Siroc.

Jacqueline expected silent grief or contained anger; she did not think the self-possessed inventor was one to throw things or punch the walls. She considered that she might find him weeping, and she knew what Jacqueline Roget would do in such a situation. Jacques Leponte, however, would be at something of a loss. Jacqueline decided she’d play such a situation by ear.

He was not in tears, however, nor was he seething over the letter. He had not even heard her come in, in fact. Siroc had set up three blackboards end to end and was ricocheting between them, chalk in both hands, completing equations and drawing diagrams on one board and then another.

Jacqueline approached cautiously from behind. He certainly did not look like a man who’d just received life-changing news. He looked like the preoccupied genius Jacqueline knew, perhaps a touch more manic. He’s like me, she realized, heart twisting. He works when he doesn’t want to feel.

He had a smudge of chalk dust across his nose and left cheek that made him look about ten years old. As Jacqueline watched, she could see how it had gotten there: every few minutes he would step back, frown at one of the boards, and push his hair out of his face with a hand that still held a piece of chalk. The honey-brown curls were badly in need of a trim, she noticed. They wisped over his ears and into the open collar of his linen shirt, since he had not bothered to comb it smoothly back. 

“Siroc,” she began tentatively, “are you all right?”

Startled, he turned. “Jacques? How did you get in here?”

Jacqueline jerked a thumb over her shoulder, shrugging as if she sneaked into his sanctum every day. “I came in the back way. You, um, left the door locked.”

He gave her a tight, thin-lipped smile. “Yes, well, that was deliberate. I’m very close to a solution, and I’d prefer not to be disturbed.”

“Oh. I thought we were reading Descartes tonight.” Jacqueline tried not to sound as disappointed as she felt.

Siroc’s expression didn’t change. “You can read if you like, but please do so quietly. This is very important.” He turned back to the blackboards.

Jacqueline turned to retrieve the book so he wouldn’t see her disappointment. Usually she read aloud and they discussed the concepts, Siroc listening to her ideas as much as she to his. Descartes in hand, she sat down a little way away from him and tried again. “Siroc, are you all right?”

He paused, irritation clear in his posture, keeping his back to her. “I’m fine, just busy.”

“Oh.” She waited a moment to make him think she was actually considering how busy he was pretending to be. “What was in the letter, then?” 

“I told you,” he not-quite-snapped.

More hurt than angered by his continued resistance, Jacqueline said quietly, “I know you did. I just didn’t believe you.” And I care about you, she did not add.

Siroc went very still and then unfroze and pushed his hair back again. “Why not, if I may ask?” He narrowed his brandy-brown eyes at her.

Putting the book away, Jacqueline crossed to him, turned him around, and grasped both his shoulders in what she hoped was a masculine, comradely gesture. “Because I know you too well.” He was shaking, a fine, nervous shiver.

The dust on his face spoiled his sneer. “I doubt that very much.” He pulled away.

Jacqueline stepped back sharply, as if he’d hit her, trying to keep her “Jacques” mask in place. “You have chalk on your nose,” she said gruffly, too deeply for convincing masculinity. I sound, she thought, like a little girl trying to imitate her father.

He pulled out his handkerchief to wipe it off, but only succeeded in smearing it around further. Not thinking too clearly about what she was doing, Jacqueline took out her own handkerchief, pushed his hand aside, and cleaned him up. “Siroc,” she asked, in a voiced perilously close to her normal alto, “what’s wrong?”

He submitted to her ministrations, brows drawn, mouth set, half defiant and half pained. He did not answer. Flushed, Jacqueline pulled the chalky handkerchief away the moment she was done, wondering what excuse Jacques Leponte could find for mothering a fellow cadet. 

And the best explanation her heart could find was that she was not Jacques Leponte. She had been so worried for so long that he would guess, or that someone else would, because of the way she acted around him. She hurt with the strain of holding her heart back, and she did not think she could very much longer. And she found she did not want to, that she did not care if he knew. That she wanted him to know. Even his revulsion would be better than killing herself by trying not to feel every time their eyes met or their shoulders brushed over a book.

So she decided to tell him, to do what she’d been aching to do for what seemed like forever: Jacqueline leaned forward and gently, tenderly kissed his lips. The pounding in her ears, like horses’ hooves, drowned out everything else, so she felt rather than heard his sharp intake of breath. But he turned his mouth to fit hers, and for a second frozen in time, a moment only, they shared the kiss.

Then Siroc recoiled, grabbing her shoulders and holding her at arms length. “Jacqueline, you shouldn’t have done that.” His voice was as husky as hers had been, and as shaky as he was. He’d gone shirt-white again.

The warmth of his hands seeping through her shirt made it hard to concentrate, so it took Jacqueline a moment to realize what he’d called her. “J-J-Jacqueline? You know? You knew?” she stammered.

“I’ve known for almost a month,” he said, brown eyes holding hers and telling her the truth. “But someone else knows, too. You wanted to know what was wrong? You’d better read this. It concerns you, as well.” Siroc pulled a crumpled piece of parchment from his pocket and held it out to her: the letter.

Smoothing it out, Jacqueline deciphered the ornate script. Siroc stood beside her, shoulder against hers, hands behind his back as if he didn’t know what to do with them, or wouldn’t do what he wanted to. 

“It has come to my attention that one of your comrades, a certain Jacques Leponte, is a wanted fugitive, a murderer, and a traitor. If his life is dear to you, return to me, and I will destroy all evidence of his actions. If, within one month, I receive no word from you, I will publish his crimes, and he will hang.” 

It was signed simply Giulio, Cardinal Mazarin.

Chapter Ten: Tell Me Now What You See

After Jacqueline had poured over the letter for ten minutes, she began to read it out loud, something Siroc had noticed she did when she was having a hard time understanding something. “Don’t,” he said, before she’d finished the fifth word. “Don’t, Jacqueline.” The words were branded in his mind; it would be agonizing to hear them again, especially in her voice. 

She stopped and looked up, biting her lip. “Sorry. I don’t understand, though: if he knows I’m a fugitive, he must know I’m Jacqueline Roget: a woman. But he doesn’t mention it.”

Siroc stared at her for a long moment, digesting not only the words but the sweetness of her woman’s voice, no longer deepened in the semblance of masculinity. He was also amazed that she could still ask rational questions. His own logic had scattered upon first sight of the letter, cold, ickening fear drowning all analytical processes. I should have known this day would come, was all he had been able to think, resting his forehead against the cool wood of the door he’d just shut in his friends’ faces.

He hadn’t stayed there long, because their knocking reverberated through the heavy wood, and he could not bear thought of their well-meaning, worried faces then. So, mind carefully blank, he had gone to the far corner of the lab, pulled out his notes on Kepler’s conjecture of , and copied the latest series of equations out onto a blackboard. When he had filled one, he dragged over another. And a third, and set to work.

The problem was interesting, and challenging, and of great importance to the Parisian intellectual community, but a little part of his brain remained detached. It sat back and watched his synapses fire faster than his hands could write, and it shook its head. Coward, it said. Siroc told it to shut up and continued to not-think about the letter in his pocket. Until the subject of that letter interrupted him.

He would have preferred d’Artagnan, an older friend who knew his past and was not so wrapped up in the problem of the letter. Siroc had half expected him: d'Artagnan used the “back way” nearly every week. But it was Jacqueline who had remembered it instead, used it, and tried to draw 

him out. And when that had failed, she had kissed him- or he had kissed her- it was all jumbled together in his head, and he did not like the mess. He needed time to order his mind and decide on a course of action. He did not need her there to confuse him with the warmth of her body and her perceptive questions. 

But she was staring at him, her query hanging in the air between them. He dropped onto a stool beside her, pressing the heels of his hands into his eyes. “I can only surmise that he’s had us watched, and thinks that I…love you, not knowing you are a woman.” He tried to keep irritation from his voice, and found it ebbing away. Jacqueline was as deeply tangled in this problem as he, and through no fault of her own. “He does not mention it, because then he would lose his hold over me.” 

Jacqueline absorbed this in silence, and Siroc was afraid to take his hands from his face to see her reaction. He was sure that all the words she knew for what he had just said the Cardinal thought he was were insults. For that matter, all the ones he knew were, and so he did not use them. 

“Why-” Jacqueline finally managed. “Why would he think that?”

He could hear the other questions forming in her mind, the questions she did not know how to ask, any more than he knew how to answer them. Siroc took a deep breath, pulling the fragments of his life together in his mind. He had known she would ask. Lifting his head, he said, “It’s a long story.”

“I have time, if you want to tell it,” Jacqueline replied, and she reached out for his hand, not looking at him. He didn’t twitch away, though her fingers were hard and calloused from hours holding a rapier. His nails were chewed and he had a scrap of bandage on his palm covering a steam burn from the distillery. They clung together like drowning men, rather than from love or joy. 

Siroc did not want to tell the story, but he decided to because she had reached for him, and because he thought he could make it through the story if she did not let go. “The palace gossip holds,” he began in an odd, tight voice, turning and looking just past her eyes, “that Cardinal Mazarin is the Queen’s lover. I do not know if this is true, but if it is, then his tastes have changed somewhat since I knew him. Then he preferred boys, lithe, budding youngsters whose families he had blackmailed or exiled. He took their sons as a final blow and it crushed a great many of them utterly. Some of them it did not, and when they tried to fight back, he had them murdered.”

Jacqueline started at this, and opened her mouth to speak, but he went on, afraid that if he lost momentum the words would jam in his throat. “When he found me, though, he was not looking for a catamite at all. You may have heard of the Cathars, heretics eradicated from France five hundred years ago? Well,” he leaned forward, and the expression in his eyes frightened Jacqueline, “the Church did not burn them all.

She had heard of the Cathars, but it was the stuff of legends and stories, as fantastic and hard to believe as those of the Holy Grail. The Cathars, she knew, were a religious sect who had defied the Catholic Church’s corruption and base teachings. They had been punished as 

heretics- burned alive to eradicate what the Church called their abominable souls and beliefs. But all Jacqueline had ever heard of their beliefs, all that she thought might be true, were their vows of chastity, poverty, and their strict adherence to the Gospel of John. They had been a peaceful people the Church had felt threatened by. 

He saw the memory in her eyes and swallowed, then went on. “A few survived, necessarily forsaking the sect’s vow of chastity so they would not die out by their own hand. And so that the treasure of the Cathars would not be lost. It was this treasure that the Cardinal was seeking when he found my family. Though my mother was one of the last descendants of the Cathars, my father had Huguenot leanings, which is why Mazarin brought him in in the first place.

“My father was a strong man. He revealed nothing under torture, but when Mazarin’s men searched our home they found books written in a language far older than Latin or Greek, the covers embossed with an obelisk very like the one worshipped by Mazarin’s secret order. And Mazarin knew he had found the remnants of the Cathars, and their treasure. He killed my father. And then he tortured my sisters before my mother’s eyes until she told him where the obelisk was. And then he killed her, and my sisters.” Siroc paused, almost panting, feeling his heart, which had knit over three years, break again, the pieces jagged inside his chest

“And what about you?” Jacqueline was almost afraid to ask. He would not look away from her eyes, and she found she could not look away from the brokenness in his, and that frightened her.

“Me he kept.” Siroc was smiling now, a horrible false rictus. “He had some idea that as the oldest son, the heir of the Cathars, I might have been taught to read the ancient texts. Mazarin gave me toys and books, and told me that my family had been killed by renegade heretics, that he was my guardian now. And every night he took me to his bed.” He stopped, searching her eyes for signs of pity and revulsion. 

“Oh, Siroc,” she murmured, feeling shocked and slightly ill, but trying not to let what she felt show on her face, for his sake. And her resolve to see Giulio Mazarin dead at her feet hardened more, like a blade in her soul. 

“I was thirteen. I did not know.” He looked away from her, raking his hair back, anguish and memory hard in his eyes. “I forgot in the morning. I was a clever child, building things and reading everything I could get my hands on, which the Cardinal of course encouraged. But I never touched my father’s books; he had told me not to. And I obeyed.”

“After two years, Mazarin grew frustrated with coddling me. He began to try to force me to take an interest in the texts, pressing to determine if I could read them. He tried withholding my books, my walks, and my meals. But when he took my equipment away, I fought back, realizing he wanted something from me. I had a weapon against him and I used it.”

“He didn’t like that, and he…hurt me.” The memory pained him as much as the blows had, and his hand tightened convulsively on Jacqueline’s. She returned the pressure in an attempt to comfort him, and then remembered his burn. Ignoring it, he wouldn’t let her loosen her grip.

“I-I tried to run twice, and twice they caught me and brought me back to him. You’ve seen my back, and you’ve seen Mazarin’s dungeons. After that, I behaved. I poured over the texts for hours, copying out gibberish and manipulating it based on mathematical patterns. The Cardinal praised my efforts, but gnashed his teeth at my continued failure. He was convinced I did not know the language.” He smiled bitterly, for the child he had been, and at how close that child had been to giving in when the Cardinal relented.

“That meant, however pretty I was, I was useless to him, and a liability. I knew too much. One night I overheard him telling the Captain of his Guard to do to me what had been done to my parents before the Cardinal returned from court that night. I packed a bag, took two thousand pistoles from Mazarin’s desk, and left. I was seventeen.”

“But the books and the obelisk!” Jacqueline burst out, in disbelief that her erudite friend would abandon his family’s legacy and the knowledge contained therein. 

“Oh, I let him keep those, with a note on his blotter- I left him the key to the code. The wrong one, a false key my father had drilled into my head since before I could walk, with the language of the Cathars’ books. 

“And I walked out into Paris, a city I’d not seen for three years, and managed to find my way to the men I had heard Mazarin say time and again he hated the most: the Musketeers. Mazarin hates them more now because they protect me. And now he has found a way to have me back: you.” The rush of words, articulate and utterly bereft of emotion, seemed to have drained Siroc. He pulled his hand from hers, standing and leaning heavily against the workbench, hands tight on its edge. He breathed quietly, feeling sad and empty and clean, wondering what she would do with the story. Captain Duval had not seemed to know what to make of the version Siroc had told him, but he had let a vastly underage boy into the Musketeers without asking further questions. D’Artagnan, who had weaseled bits of it out of him, over the years of their friendship, had seemed sorry he asked every time, but had kept probing. Siroc was glad to have told the whole of it to someone he trusted, though the telling had been hellish. 

Jacqueline had no words, but she stood up and put her arms around him gently. He stiffened at the touch, and then seemed to relax. “Mazarin killed my father and made my brother an exile,” she said finally. “I know some of what you feel, and I will help you, because you swore an oath with me that first day and because…I think I love you.” Hearing the words come out of her own mouth surprised her. I don’t have time to fall in love, she thought, but the coalescing of feeling that had prompted her admission did not seem to her like the kind of love one had to fall into. It was a warmth simmering somewhere beneath her breastbone, borne of his kindness and their friendship, and it did not scare her. 

“Do you?” His voice was strained, slightly disbelieving, but although his fingers remained clenched on the bench, he did not shrug her off. 

Jacqueline nodded. “I would like to know how you discovered I was a woman, though” 

Siroc took a deep breath to steady himself. If it had been hard to think with her standing nearby, it was infinitely harder to answer her questions while she held him. His brain, which he liked to think of as ascetic and cerebral, seemed to have switched off, and some other impulse wanted nothing more than to return Jacqueline’s embrace. He fought it. “Because I’ve thought there was something strange about “Jacques Leponte” for a long time, and something strange about the way I felt about you for a short time. I watched the way d’Artagnan acts around you-”

“Oh, d’Artagnan!” Jacqueline groaned. “I knew he’d give me away. I’ve told him to treat me like one of the others since he found out- the first day, rescuing Gerard.” She dropped her head against his shoulder, triggering some reflex Siroc hadn’t studied. His arms came up around her, and she sighed a little, which did something strange and not entirely nice to his stomach. 

“So the two of you aren’t-“ Confused and glad at the same time, he stopped, not daring to hope.

“Aren’t what? Together? No, I wish he’d leave me alone.” Jacqueline didn’t know exactly what she felt for d’Artagnan, but that much she was sure of. And on impulse, because he looked so relieved, she leaned forward and kissed Siroc again. 

He made a small noise at that, but it was lost as he returned her kiss. Siroc found he didn’t need his brain at all in the release of their coming together. It frightened him a little, but he found himself enjoying a kiss for the first time in his life. Jacqueline found her reserved and solitary friend a very good kisser, and did not want to think about where he’d learned. Reaching up, he tangled a hand in her hair, popping the leather tie loose and freeing the chestnut mane. Jacqueline would have bridled had she not been otherwise-and more pleasurably-occupied.

A masculine throat cleared behind them, and the pair whirled. Jacqueline saw Siroc reddening as much as she was, and felt a burst of protective ferocity. “I hope I’m not interrupting anything,” d’Artagnan said sardonically, descending the folding ladder from the attic. 

Chapter Eleven: Speak To Him

Jacqueline and Siroc stared at the nonchalant form of their comrade. “Actually, you are,” Siroc said testily, at the same time Jacqueline blurted, “How long have you been there?”

D'Artagnan stepped down from the ladder. “Long enough to hear you say you wished I’d leave you alone. Which is exactly what I plan to do.” He looked at Siroc. “Do you mind if I use the door? The attic’s a little dusty.” 

Taking the inventor’s nonplussed shrug as acquiescence, d'Artagnan crossed to the door. The hurt she’d heard in his flippant answer had made Jacqueline feel strangely guilty, so she started after him. “D'Artagnan, wait. I didn’t mean-” But she had, and she did wish he would stop treating her like a prospective girlfriend and start behaving more like she was just another of his comrades. His ‘male’ comrades. “Siroc guessed,” she finished quietly. “I don’t want anyone else to.” 

D'Artagnan, to her surprise, nodded and stepped back toward them, an overture of his own in response to hers. “Can I see the letter?” he asked, looking to Siroc. 

Jacqueline saw the look that passed between the two men before the inventor passed it over. Siroc’s tightly closed expression opened a bit, spilling a naked plea. D'Artagnan nodded in reassurance and held out his hand for the letter, gripping Siroc’s fingers briefly before their hands parted.

D'Artagnan read it quickly, and then he laid it down and called Giulio Mazarin the words Siroc and Jacqueline hadn’t wanted to use, and a few more things besides. “What are we going to do?” he said, when he’d finished and caught his breath.

With one word he had made their problem his own, sharing the burden of this day among three instead of just two. Two it would have broken. Three could go on, for a little while. Grateful, Jacqueline managed a brief smile and slung an arm around both of their shoulders.

Siroc looked down, chewing his lip. “We’d have to kill Mazarin.” 

“Or clear my name,” Jacqueline added.

D'Artagnan shrugged. “They both amount to the same thing.” 

And then the door fell in. 

D'Artagnan, back to the entrance, managed to jump and half-turn at the same time, while Jacqueline and Siroc lunged for their swords, lying with their baldrics on a chair. When the dust cleared, the three of them saw Ramon standing in the doorway, hair in disarray, a triumphant expression plastered on his face. “See, you’re not the only one who can take things apart!” he declared, jabbing what looked like a screwdriver at Siroc. “And d'Artagnan said he had a plan,” he scoffed, then noticed the other two.

“What have you done to my door?” Siroc asked, voice strangled, eyes a little wild.

Ramon deflated visibly. “I took the hinges off. How did you two get in?” He blinked at them, brown eyes puzzled.

Jacqueline and d'Artagnan pointed to the trapdoor as Siroc strode across the room, snatched the screwdriver from Ramon’s hand, and went out to look at the damage. The Spaniard, now looking very chagrined, stepped over the door. “What was in the letter?” he asked quietly, to no one in particular.

D'Artagnan shot a quick, questioning glance at Jacqueline. She nodded, feeling the world begin to turn around her, and clung to what she was and what she knew. My life is changing, she thought. God help me. 

Passing the letter to Ramon, d'Artagnan said casually, “I think I’ll go help Siroc with the, uh, hinges.”

Watching him leave, Jacqueline took a deep breath, knowing what he expected her to do. She watched Ramon digest the letter, then waited for him to stop calling the Cardinal, in Spanish, all the names d'Artagnan had. “Is this true?” he demanded, waving the letter at her.

“Yes,” she said, “I killed the man who’d killed my father on Mazarin’s orders.” She tensed, waiting for his reaction.

“Oh well, that’s all right then.” No sooner had Ramon’s expression cleared than his brow creased in thought. “Then why hasn’t Mazarin had you hauled in before now? He’s seen you enough times, and there would have been wanted posters and searches….” He trailed off, frowning at her.

“There have been,” she said, ”but they were for Jacqueline Roget. Who is me.” She steeled herself for whatever he might choose to do with this information.

Ramon peered at her. “No! I always thought there was something funny about you, like your mother dropped you on your head when you were little or something. But a woman?” He cocked his head, eyes narrowed. “I don’t believe it.”

“Ramon!” Jacqueline’s voice rose a little with her irritation. Of all the reactions she’d expected, this was not one of them. “I’m not going 

to prove it to you.”

As she glared up at the tall Spaniard, he threw back his head and began to laugh. The rich, rolling sound filled the room, and Jacqueline felt her irritation begin to melt away. She loved that sound, and always would, no matter how many times it was directed at her “You don’t have to. I’m joking.” And he threw his arms around her, nearly squeezing the breath out of her in a hug.

“Oh.” Jacqueline patted his back tentatively, not sure what her revelation was about to do to this friend. In a single day, it had stopped d'Artagnan from teasing her because she was new and could beat him with a sword to teasing her because he knew she was a woman. And Siroc…Siroc had known, and kept her secret so well, she had not known he knew it, and for that she loved him.

After a moment he drew back, keeping a firm grip on her shoulders, grinning madly. Jacqueline noticed his dimples and wondered if she had before. Oh no, she thought, it’s like I’ve just turned into a woman, instead of them having just found out. They’ll treat me like I’ve changed.

She realized that Ramon was saying something to her in Spanish and shook her head numbly as he, to her surprise, leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek.

He was moving toward the other when Siroc called, “Ramon, you want to give us a hand with this?” sticking his head around the heavy oak door that he and d'Artagnan were attempting to prop back up.

Shrugging, Ramon flashed Jacqueline another broad grin and went to help hang the door. After he’d gone, she found the leather band and tied her hair back, wishing she had enough ribbon for a queue. Fear of her friends’ reaction to her gender had been replaced with fear that they’d all begin flirting with her, keeping her out of dangerous situations, and asking to be paired with her for assignments. Though she found herself thinking that she wouldn’t mind assignments with Siroc, and wondered what the other two would have to say about that.

They are still my friends, she told herself, shaking her head to clear it. She needed to talk this over with Marthe, who might have experienced similar things, and would be refreshingly female, in any case. Jacqueline had gone without the woman’s sprightly conversation for too long; now she had an excuse to visit Café Nouveau and seek out the baker.

But first she needed to talk quite a different experience over with her other friends. Mazarin’s letter caught her eye, even though she had purposely not been looking at it. The innocuous scrap of paper had a malevolent presence even when she couldn’t see the words written on it. Telling herself she wasn’t superstitious, Jacqueline turned it over on the table and went to help with the door.

While d'Artagnan held up one edge and Siroc the other, she and Ramon slid the lynch pins back in place and tightened the hinges. Then, one at a time, they let go, all holding their breaths to see if the heavy oak slab would drop or swing in place. It held, but Siroc, frowning, pushed 

it back and forth a couple times to make sure.

Leaving him to this, the other three filed nonchalantly into the lab, finding seats on workbenches and chairs, all of their expressions making clear they weren’t going to be evicted a second time. Satisfied with the hinges, Siroc closed the door and bolted it, turning to half-glare at them. 

D'Artagnan assumed an innocent air, rubbing at his shoulder. “Why do you need such a heavy door, anyway, Siroc?”

“I like my door. It’s good at keeping people out.” The inventor cut his eyes at Ramon. 

The Spaniard’s expression now matched d'Artagnan’s as he shrugged. “We were worried about you, amigo.” 

“Yes, well, it’s none of your business.” 

Jacqueline sat up, seeing Siroc withdraw into himself, posture tensing as he tried the same thing on them as he had before with her. “Siroc, we’re your friends; we want to help you. And don’t tell me it’s not my business,” she warned.

Half-turning away from them, Siroc ran a hand through his hair. He’s going to go bald at thirty if he keeps that up, she thought fondly, and then forced her attention back to the matter at hand in time to hear Siroc say, very softly, “I don’t want you-any of you-involved in this. I’ll go, I’ll get…close to Mazarin, and then I’ll kill him.”

“Oh?” Ramon vaulted off his stool. “And then what about you? They’ll hang you, or worse.” He began to pace like a caged panther.

“Not to mention the Musketeers would be discredited,” d'Artagnan pointed out, crossing his arms.

“With Mazarin dead, the Musketeers’ reputation won’t matter. He won’t be there to malign it,” Siroc said in the same tight, quiet voice, not looking at any of them.

Jacqueline got up and slid her hand in his. “You’re not going anywhere near him, ever again. Ever.” It was her turn not to look at Ramon’s and d'Artagnan’s expressions. “What we could try, something that might work, is me turning myself in.”

“No!” D'Artagnan and Siroc spoke at the same time, with Ramon only a fraction after them.

Jacqueline rolled her eyes. “You could rescue me afterwards, or plead my case to the king.” She wasn’t sure who she was trying to convince, her friends or herself.

“Wouldn’t work,” Siroc said flatly. “Mazarin has the king’s ear, and he hates you. He’d hang you no matter what we said, torture you first, and use the incident to defame the Musketeers in the process.” He squeezed her hand, which Jacqueline ignored. If he was going to find holes in her plan, he wasn’t going to make up for it with caresses.

“Let’s hear your brilliant idea, then,” Jacqueline snapped, or tried to. The words fell flat, as though she couldn’t be angry with him with his fingers twined around hers, and her glare wilted.

“You already have,” he said quietly, voice and eyes bleak.

Ramon’s pacing had grown increasingly manic, his long legs carrying him around the room in quick strides. Now he stopped, pointing a finger at Jacqueline and Siroc. “Nobody’s going to Mazarin. Nobody’s turning themselves in, all right?” He began to pace again when they didn’t answer, startled at his ferocity.

“Ramon’s right,” said d'Artagnan, turning the letter over and glaring at it. “It says he’ll ‘destroy all evidence of your crimes,’ Jacqueline. What evidence is there?”

Jacqueline forced herself to think about the details of the moments that had changed her life forever. “I don’t know. There were six of the Cardinal’s men with the coach. They’re witnesses.”

“Would Mazarin kill his own men?” The three looked at Ramon, and then at one another, no doubt in any of their minds.

“Have you seen any of them since?” d'Artagnan asked her, frowning. “Maybe he already has.” 

“No- yes, yes I have. A corporal- his name is Falron or Faucon. I’ve seen him with Lieutenant d’Orsay a few times.” He had appeared with a message for the Lieutenant during a duel. Jacqueline, d’Orsay’s second, had not known the nature of the message, though the two men had seemed on friendly terms. Later, she had seen them walking together, the picture of friendship, though how a Musketeer and a Guard came to be friends Jacqueline did not know. “But there might be others. I didn’t look that closely at them then,” she added. 

“Even if he did have all of them murdered,” Siroc said into the ensuing silence, “if he wanted to destroy all the evidence he’d have to kill himself. He’s an eyewitness, and his word is beyond contestation in a court.”

“Hijo de ramera!” Ramon swore, stopping stock still. “You’re right. There’s no way he could keep his word, then.”

“I don’t trust him anyway,” Jacqueline admitted. I trust Captain Duval, though, she thought, piecing her plan together, a plan she had no intention of sharing with her friends. He would see that I had a fair trial. But most importantly, he would protect Siroc.

“Which leaves us at an impasse,” Siroc spoke beside her, drawing her from her plotting. 

D'Artagnan slammed a fist down on the letter and stood. “I say we call the Cardinal’s bluff. He gave us a month, why not take him up on it?”

“Sounds good to me.” Ramon, who had been staring at Jacqueline and Siroc’s joined hands, headed for the door, dragging d'Artagnan along 

with him. “I can’t think on an empty stomach. We’ll just leave you two alone, all right. Good night!” He pulled his comrade out the door and shut it behind them, not giving the startled d’Artagnan time to say a word.

Siroc stared after the two. “That was...odd.”

Jacqueline managed a small laugh. “I don’t think he’s used to Jacqueline yet.”

He turned to look at her, his smile tired and a little rueful. “I don’t know if I’m used to Jacqueline yet.”

Jacqueline reached up to touch his face, one she was used to, enjoying the feel of the fine curving bones under the skin, the light fur of stubble, drawing her hand up his cheek to his forehead, where she pushed his hair out of his eyes and looked at him. He let her, but seemed not to know how to reciprocate as her fingers traced who he was, a memory that she could keep beside her no matter what they did to her.

“Then I say we should fix that,” Jacqueline said, putting the Cardinal and his letter out of her head as her lips met Siroc’s in a kiss that might be the last one they ever shared.

Chapter Twelve: I Prithee

Once outside the lab, Ramon dragged d'Artagnan into a disused corridor. “You want to tell me what that was about?” He dusted himself off, glaring up at the taller man. 

“Yeah, after you tell me what that was about.” Ramon pointed back down the hall, mouth twitching. “Siroc and Jacques were- were holding hands!” He sounded like he couldn’t decide whether to be outraged because Siroc got to Jacqueline first or pleased because Siroc had a girlfriend.

“Jacqueline,” d'Artagnan corrected absently, just to get a word in. 

“Yes, yes, I know. And you knew too, yes?” Ramon was pacing again as he put together the pieces of this new puzzle, mouth pursed.

“I knew, and Siroc guessed. When, I don’t know. Will you stop that?” D'Artagnan blocked Ramon’s way. “Someone will hear you.”

“So are they- what are they?” Ramon held himself still, with visible effort. 

“I don’t know. They were kissing when I came in.” d'Artagnan still didn’t want to think about this, but he was going to have some choice words for Jacqueline when next he caught her alone, concerning her intentions toward Siroc and the genesis of the gesture. For now though, he put his worry for his friends out of his head. 

“They were what? Kissing!” Ramon’s brows drew together in surprise.

“Keep your voice down,” d'Artagnan hissed.

“Oh, this is terrible!” Ramon ranted, sotto voce.

“Yes, it is,” d'Artagnan agreed. “Wait, why do you think it’s terrible?” He thought he knew why he thought it was terrible, but wondered that Ramon should.

“Siroc doesn’t know anything about women. He’ll break her heart when she finds out he’d rather dissect sheep brains than be with her.” Ramon started to pace again, muttering to himself in Spanish.

“I’d be more worried about his heart,” d'Artagnan muttered, and then realized the other man was not paying any attention to him at all. “Will you stop that, Ramon!”

*~*

Siroc and Jacqueline pulled apart, panting, and before she could lean in for another kiss he reached up to pinch the bridge of his nose. “What’s wrong?” Concerned, she touched his cheek, since she could not kiss him.

“Oh, I can feel a headache coming on. Today has been…difficult.”

Thinking he had a gift for understatement, Jacqueline watched him, warning bells going off inside her head. She knew about Siroc’s headaches, if the debilitating periods of blinding pain could be called by such an innocuous name. They struck him every few months, she had noticed, whenever he got so caught up in a project that he forgot to sleep or eat for days. 

This one is my fault, Jacqueline realized, because between guard duty at the palace and work on the distillery, the only time he’d had to help her prepare for the Examen was at night- and they often worked all night, never stopping before the small hours of the morning. And now the shock of Mazarin’s letter, the stress of remembering his past in enough detail to relate it to her, and whatever was now between them had been too much for Siroc.

“Sit down.” Jacqueline half-pushed, half-guided him onto a bench. He sat, eyes slightly unfocused. “Is there any willow-bark tea left?”

“Yes.” He spoke with great effort, as though pulling the words from himself by main force. “I decanted it. The mixture is supposed to gain potency…over time.”

“Where is it, Siroc?” Jacqueline pressed quietly, knowing that the pain growing behind his eyes would amplify any sound. 

“In the cupboard under the distillery.”

Jacqueline went to look. “Which jar?” A row of differently-sized one greeted her, all filled with murky brown liquid.

Siroc took his hands from his eyes and squinted at them. “On the right, not the smallest one. There.” She carried it over, prying the lid off as she came.

He raised it to his lips the moment she pressed it into his hands, making a face after a long drink. “Reducing it certainly hasn’t improved the flavor,” he said, giving her a ghost of his bright smile over the rim. 

Jacqueline patted his shoulder. “Drink it, and I’ll help you to your room.” ‘Please let him have forgotten about the sedative,’ she prayed, and then decided to make sure he forgot. Both hands now on his shoulders, she pressed her thumbs into the thick muscle at the base of his neck and her fingertips into the knots by his shoulders, moving in slow circles and almost smiling as he moaned a little and drank again. 

By the time the tea was gone, Jacqueline had fought and won a pitched battle with the tension in Siroc’s muscles, and she could see him forcing his eyelids open as they tried to slide shut. “Come on.” She slid an arm under his and levered him up, groaning at the twelve stone 

of dead weight in her arms. “Siroc, you have to help me.”

“I’ll sleep here,” he mumbled, half-rising, hair standing up in soft, sandy whorls as one hand reached languidly up to stifle a yawn. 

“No, you won’t.” Jacqueline propelled him toward the door. “Think how sore you’d be in the morning.”

“I’m sore now,” he pointed out, as she got a better grip on his waist and pointed him down the hall. Jacqueline ignored him, busy counting doors to find his room, glad it wasn’t far. Fortunately his door was ajar- she didn’t have a free hand to open it- though she nearly overbalanced kicking it open.

The room was charmingly untidy, wardrobe open, bits of machines scattered on every available surface, books overflowing from the nightstand onto the floor. She half-dropped him onto the unmade bed, ignoring his incoherent protests. He’d left jacket and baldric in the lab, but she undid his belt and pulled it off so he wouldn’t wake if he rolled over on the buckle. 

Not that he’s rolling anywhere now, she thought, arranging the supine form into something resembling a prone position and covering him lightly with a sheet. The night was warm. Exhausted herself, she smoothed his fair hair on the pillow, watching the frown lines relax on his forehead. Jacqueline was very tempted to lie down beside him, and only the thought of what she must do this night kept her from sharing his narrow cot in sleep. 

Steeling herself to go, she bent and kissed him, closing her eyes against welling tears as she drew back. He sat up suddenly as she did, and grabbed her shirt. “Jacqueline!” He blinked up at her with every appearance of lucidity. “We never read Descartes.” 

She pried his hand free, trying to smile although her heart was breaking. “It doesn’t matter.” After tonight, nothing matters.

He settled back, eyes fluttering shut as she eased off the bed. “Jacqueline?” His hand groped for hers and found it. “Don’t go.” A drifting plea, uncertain, like a lost child’s, the words wrenched something inside Jacqueline as she glimpsed the boy he might have been. 

She sat down on the cot once more and began to stroke his hair. At her touch, he gave a little sigh and lay still, but Jacqueline stayed with him until his breathing became quiet and even in sleep. And then she laid her head on his chest and began to cry silently, shaking as she felt his heart beat beside her ear. ”Don’t go, don’t go,” the rhythm seemed to say, asking her over and over, as its owner had and now could not. 

Dear God, she prayed, Holy Mother, give me the strength to leave him, because I love him. After a moment she sat up and wiped her eyes. And left.

On her way down the hall Jacqueline thought about how to tell a man she respected greatly that she had been lying to him. I’m going to get kicked out of the Musketeers anyway, she thought, whether Captain does 

it or the king. But I might as well tell my story to a fair audience first, whatever he decides to make of it. But that whatever still frightened her. She trusted Captain Duval; he reminded her of her father at times, but he was still only the lesser of two evils in her dilemma. Unable to predict his reaction, she was taking a chance, for love and for desperation. 

A light showed underneath Duval’s office door; he was working late. Jacqueline knocked, and went in when he called. The Captain looked up from his stack of duty rosters. “Leponte. What can I do for you?” He gave her a tired, expectant smile.

“I need-” the words jammed in her throat. “I need to speak to you, sir.” She shut the door.

He put the papers away. “Well, sit down, then. This wouldn’t have anything to do with the crash I heard an hour ago, would it?” he asked, less accusing than curious. 

Caught off guard, Jacqueline nearly laughed. ”No, that was Siroc’s door. It fell off. We put it back, though, so don’t worry, sir.” She took a deep breath, gathering her story to tell him much as Siroc had before he gave his past to her. “No, I need to talk to you about what I told you before I joined, sir.”

He cocked an eyebrow at her, leaning back in his chair. “About your family?”

She nodded. And then she launched into the truth, telling the story bare of details but in full, from the truth of her gender and her father’s murder to her enlistment, watching the growing scowl on his face until she could bear it no longer and looked down. “I’m sorry I lied, sir, but I had to. And now I have to let the truth be known, because if I don’t stand for what I did, someone I love will. Please believe me now. I need- I’d like- a fair trial, if you can arrange one.” 

The Captain took a moment to digest her tale before answering. “Leponte, it might surprise you how many of the Musketeers lied to get into the corps. They’re here because they have to be as well. Don’t think you’re a special case.” She thought he was trying to sound disapproving and failing, like her father had when she tried some reckless stunt that had worked miraculously.

Jacqueline nodded, steeling herself for the dismissal.

“Now, while I’m glad you’ve been honest, the way to help yourself and whoever you’re trying to protect is not to run away. So I’m going to forget the last ten minutes, and I suggest you do the same. Dismissed.” He picked up his stack of papers again. 

“But sir, you don’t-” He looked up, daring her to presume. She swallowed the rest of the comment. “A woman and a wanted fugitive in the Musketeers?” She could not believe that her stolid commander could turn a blind eye when presented with this, especially considering his sarcastic remarks in the past concerned women in the Musketeers.

“Leponte,” he began acerbically. ”the last time I checked, I was the one 

responsible for the makeup of the regiment. You’re dismissed. I’m not going to tell you again.” He made a show of ignoring her increasingly drop-jawed expression.

Jacqueline stood, moving as if her muscles weren’t her own, and bowed, grateful but wondering what on earth she was going to do now. He did look up then, and- did she catch him wink as she turned to go? Had he already known? she wondered. He certainly didn’t seem surprised.

In the hall she paused a moment, wanting nothing more than to go to bed. I’ll think of something in the morning, she told herself, yawning, and crept to her room, reeling with everything that had happened this day and with a bone-deep weariness she did not think even sleep could touch. 

Easing the door to her quarters open, she slipped inside and lit a candle from the banked fire. The dancing flame illuminated a form lounging on her chair. “D’Artagnan?!” she nearly shrieked. “What are you doing here?”

“Waiting for you,” he said, taking his feet off the desk. 

“Why? Can it wait until morning?” she snapped, wondering why he, of all people, wanted to talk to her tonight.

“Whatever you had to say to Captain Duval couldn’t wait until morning,” he pointed out, sitting up and glaring back at her.

“No, it couldn’t.” She sank down on the bed and bent to tug her boots off. “I had to do something about the letter.”

“We decided what we were going to do about the letter.”

“D'Artagnan, I appreciate your brilliant plan to do absolutely nothing when your best friend’s being blackmailed, but I’m not going to sit around and nurse my shoulder. Captain Duval wouldn’t help me. I’m going to the king and turning myself in, so Siroc will be safe.”

“No, you’re not.” He reached over and grabbed her arm, his grip like steel, making her glad it wasn’t her bad shoulder. “Have you thought about what seeing you hang would do to Siroc?”

“Have you thought about what returning to Mazarin would do to him?” she shot back, wrenching her arm free. 

“Yes, I have. And he’s not going to, if I have to lock him in his room. Do I have to lock you in yours, as well?” There was a dangerous gleam in his eyes, as though he was more than ready to put his words into action. 

“You’re not locking me anywhere.” Jacqueline’s eyes flashed too: even with her shoulder still tender, d'Artagnan was going to have quite a fight on his hands if he wanted to do anything to her against her will.

“Then I’ll just lock you in with Siroc, how about that?” His mouth tightened. “I saw you leave his room.” 

Jacqueline stripped the tie out of her hair, wondering how much trouble it would be to make him leave her room. The last thing she wanted to 

discuss while d'Artagnan was sitting her room was her love life, or lack of one. “D'Artagnan, I-”

He cut her off. “You lied to me. You told me he didn’t know you were a woman. You told me there was nothing between the two of you.” D’Artagnan’s voice rose, driving the words home in the darkness. 

“Siroc guessed. He’s very clever that way, you may have noticed,” she retorted, rubbing her eyes. “He didn’t have to have the evidence thrust in front of him.” 

“You’re certainly thrusting it in front of him now.” He stood, looming over her, voice accusing. 

“It’s none of your business. Get out of my room.” Jacqueline felt rage rising to overwhelm her fatigue, and tamped it down, knowing she wouldn’t be able to sleep if she got mad.

“Siroc is my business. He’s my best friend. I’ve known him a lot longer than you have.” He was speaking calmly now, but with an absolute sincerity. ”And what I said still stands. If you hurt him, I’ll kill you.” And he frightened her, for the first time, meaning the words more even than he had in the gym.

“D’Artagnan, I’m not going to hurt him,” she tried to explain again. “I love him.”

He wouldn’t look at her now. “Then forget about turning yourself in. Mazarin will just find another way to get at him. Jacqueline, listen to me!” Her eyes, which had begun to drift shut, snapped open. “You didn’t see him when he first enlisted. He was a mess. He skulked around and wouldn’t speak unless someone asked him a question. He had terrible nightmares and flinched at anything that moved.” The urgency of his words matched his fierce expression.

Jacqueline absorbed this, putting what Siroc had told her with what d’Artagnan was saying now. “I’ve never seen him with any of the girls at the Café, or with any other woman. He must love you, Jacqueline. Don’t- don’t break his heart,” he finished quietly, realizing that ultimately he couldn’t force Jacqueline to do anything. 

“I won’t,” she said, shaken more by the soft words than she had been by the shouted ones. “I told you, I love him.”

“Good. I wish you two all the best.” And then, surprising her even more than the sincerity of his words, d’Artagnan bent and kissed her cheek. “Good night.”

Stunned, she watched him slip out, wondering at the sudden intensity in this usually laid-back man. An intensity brought on, she realized, by the depth of his friendship. He’s worried about Siroc, she thought. He doesn’t want me to hurt him. And then, another idea: Was d'Artagnan in love with me? Did I hurt him?

Chapter Thirteen: What Else May Hap

Eventually, morning came. Morning always comes, though there are losses in the night, a price paid for light. Jacqueline rose with the sun and went to look in on Siroc. He was still asleep, curled in the tangled nest of sheets and blankets, one arm hanging off the bed. Jacqueline moved it back to his side and covered him as well as she could without waking him. And then she kissed his cheek and slipped out.

D'Artagnan was waiting for her in the hall. She opened her mouth, defensive retort ready, but he only tipped his head at the door. “Is he all right?”

Wary, she nodded, still slightly guilty about the night before. “He’s still asleep.” 

“Good,” d'Artagnan said simply. “Are you going running?”

Again, Jacqueline nodded, wondering why he was here and what he was getting at.

“I’ll come with you, then,” he said, and Jacqueline, looking down, saw that he was dressed for it, in soft shoes and old clothes.

She shrugged, planning to weasel an explanation out of him later, when he was doubled over and panting for breath. “You’ll have to keep up with me,” she warned. 

“I will, don’t worry. Come on.”

D'Artagnan kept up with her that morning and appeared at her door the next morning, too, and every morning that week. He and Ramon switched off after that, and began sharing patrols with her after Captain Duval approved her fit for duty. He had not mentioned Jacqueline’s secret since she revealed it to him, for which she was grateful.

Her friends were, she realized sometime in the second week after the letter arrived, making a point not to let her out of their sight. D'Artagnan had even gone so far as to nail up the “back way” and the ladder had disappeared. Jacqueline and Siroc had caught him at it, drawn outside by the noise of his hammering. Jacqueline had made a joke, calling up to ask d'Artagnan if he’d finally given up his philandering. He had not deigned to reply, and Siroc had dragged her back to the geometrical proof they’d left unfinished. 

D'Artagnan and Ramon dogged her steps as she went about her duties, funny and charming all the while, but implacable unless she locked herself her room or in the lab with Siroc. The inventor didn’t seem to mind, and Jacqueline usually went over to whatever book she’d been reading or helped him with his current project. After a few weeks, d'Artagnan seemed to realize that she was not going to run away, but he and Ramon still kept a protective eye on their friends, though, lest Mazarin try something. 

D'Artagnan professed a sudden interest in learning to fence with his left hand, and pestered her until she practiced with him. Siroc rolled his eyes, but Jacqueline found d'Artagnan a quick study who kept up with her with unflagging good will. Ramon, in a seemingly casual conversation one day, discovered that Jacqueline couldn’t speak any language but her own, and promptly declared that this would never do, that she must demonstrate working knowledge of a second language on the Examen. Siroc, to her horror, backed this statement up, saying this was just as well, since she was hopeless at Latin. And so Jacqueline found herself learning Spanish from Ramon, on top of everything else she and Siroc were working on. 

She actually began to enjoy the lessons after a few days. Ramon was easy-going, more laidback and less urgent than Siroc. He talked to her in the language he had grown up speaking, and answered promptly when she asked him to translate something. Knowing a second language also came in handy when the four of them needed to discuss sensitive information in public- Siroc spoke Spanish as consummately as Ramon did, and even d'Artagnan had picked a gutter patois that had Ramon in gales over his accent and often obscene slang. 

Jacqueline couldn’t decide whether to be angry at them for these precautions or grateful because they cared about her. The truth was that she could not think of anything else to do besides wait as they had agreed upon. She did not know if Siroc had ever found out about her intentions to leave the night the letter came, if d'Artagnan had told him or if he had kept his silence, so as not to hurt the inventor. And as the days passed she found herself increasingly unwilling to leave Siroc.

He would touch her at the oddest times, as if to reassure himself that she was still there, a hand in hers or on her shoulder when d’Artagnan and Ramon weren’t looking— or when Siroc thought they weren’t looking, at any rate- or a head in her door to say good night or good morning. He ate with the three of them at meals, but seemed to make a point of sitting next to Jacqueline. D'Artagnan and Ramon shared knowing, discreet looks at these goings on, and continued to trail Jacqueline and, to a lesser extent, Siroc. 

Jacqueline didn’t know if this was because they considered him less likely to sneak away, or because as the weeks went by the inventor left his laboratory less and less. The more he immersed himself in his work, the more distracted he seemed to become, though: his friends had to pry him away from his books or experiments to get him to eat, and Jacqueline finally gave up and took to taking the food to him and sharing the meal together, relishing the comfortable silence as a change from their usual rapid-fire intellectual conversations. Sometimes d'Artagnan and Ramon would join them, but more often they left Siroc and Jacqueline to whatever they thought the two of them were up to. 

Which was, Jacqueline thought, surprisingly little. As the time until the Examen shortened, Siroc began finding more and more things she had to read in preparation. Jacqueline kept up gamely, picking his brain about everything she didn’t understand. She sat curled in a chair, surrounded by books, while he paced or tinkered with the distillery or drew explanatory diagrams on the blackboard. Sometimes though, both of them too exhausted to move, they would simply sit together, her head on 

his shoulder or his on hers, holding hands. They fell asleep like that more than once, and had to endure the smirks of their friends for days afterwards.

Four weeks from the day on which the letter arrived, Jacqueline spent the day on pins and needles. She fenced herself into a stupor against five opponents in a row, switching hands until she could no longer lift a sword. She expected Ramon or d'Artagnan to stalk in and lecture her for it, but they never appeared. Perhaps they understood, or perhaps they didn’t want to face a jumpy Jacqueline. And then she bathed, the water so scalding it turned her skin lobster red, and then she went to Siroc, and they waited. D'Artagnan and Ramon drifted in around midday, silent and brooding, and the four friends sat together, unsure of what they were waiting for. Whatever it was didn’t come, and at midnight a hungry, growling Ramon and a still-silent d'Artagnan drifted away to their rooms.

Jacqueline moved next to Siroc, and he put an arm around her. “What are we going to do?” they both said together, and then: “I don’t know.” At that, both of them laughed, louder than the situation warranted, to fill the silence and reassure each other and themselves. 

Jacqueline thought she might cry, the will was there but her body would not let her. She felt weak, she, who had worked her whole life so she would be strong in the face of whatever came. Her stomach was roiling with anxiety, for the Examen and for Siroc’s and her own predicament. The man beside her must have been feeling at least as horrible. He was very pale, and every now and then a little shiver would run through him, when he thought about the Cardinal, Jacqueline guessed.

“We can’t let him do this,” she said finally, her own voice cracking. “We can’t let Mazarin destroy what we…have,” she finished lamely, unsure of what exactly it was that they had, where they stood between friendship and love. Willing to be patient because of his past, Jacqueline had let him set the pace, though he was by turns ardent and cool, caught up in his work.

“No,” Siroc said, almost whispering. “No. And he won’t.” He seemed to draw himself up, and then he leaned over and cupped her face, bending to kiss her. Jacqueline had not expected it, and their noses bumped together awkwardly as she drew away in surprise and then responded. It lasted only a moment before Siroc pulled back, drawing a deep, shuddering breath. His hand slipped down to her shoulder and he half-turned, leaning down again. 

This time, Jacqueline was ready, and wrapped her arms around his shoulders to draw him closer to her. And through the thin cloth of his shirt her splayed fingers felt the marks on his back, a tangible reminder of what Mazarin had done to him. Siroc’s teeth were fastened gently on her lower lip, making it very hard to think, but Jacqueline moved her hands to his shoulders before he could feel her tracing the welts through the linen. The memory of the Cardinal would not come between them, would not taint their discovery of love, she vowed, and slid her hands up, into his hair and pulled him down to her. 

Siroc slid off the bench and to his feet, carrying her with him, and Jacqueline made up her mind to show him what love really was, what could 

be between them, to unmake and erase his pain, and perhaps her own with it. 

That night they made a beginning, in the darkness of his sanctuary, their passion awkward but tender, trusting and very, very slow. And though the word love passed neither Siroc’s lips nor Jacqueline’s there are, after all, other ways of speaking. 

She began that night, and continued, letting her quest to shine light into all the walled-off, painful places of Siroc’s soul replace her worry over the letter and drive her with renewed zeal to her books…and her teacher. Each smile, each kiss, each touch she gave and drew from him was a victory she reveled in. Siroc responded to her joy. He dared to tell her that he loved her, in the dark when she could not see his face. And both of them dared to hope that they might be free, at last.

It was a game, a blissful delusion that sustained them and kept them from being torn apart and devoured by their fear, but it could not last. The days passed, marked off every morning on a scrap of paper pinned next to the door in the laboratory, and when only two remained to be crossed out before the one circled in a large blot of red ink-the date of the Examen-a messenger arrived at Musketeer Headquarters with an official dispatch. 

He took it directly to Captain Duval, who snatched it from his hands and read it swiftly, angry at being disturbed by the smug Guard, and then, after he finished reading, angry for quite a different reason. Dismissing the still smirking Guard, he went directly to Siroc’s lab, from which had issued for the past few hours the sounds of uproarious laughter. Duval was glad he’d managed to ignore it; the four cadets he needed to see were still all in one place.

They looked up as he threw the door open, d'Artagnan in the middle of a rude cartoon on one of Siroc’s disused blackboards, Ramon with his mouth full of pickle. Siroc and Jacqueline surreptitiously slid their hands apart, both prepared to give an explanation for the noise, but Captain Duval spoke before they could. 

“This just arrived. Siroc, Leponte, both of you are summoned to an audience with the King and the Cardinal tomorrow morning.” He narrowed his eyes, still testy. ”I think I know what this is about. I assume you do?”

Jacqueline’s hand found Siroc’s again as they both nodded. Duval seemed not to notice, and if he did, he did not say anything about it.

“Good. Be ready. I’ll go with you.” He turned on his heel and started for the door, walking stick thumping angrily. 

“Um, sir?” d'Artagnan began, edging in front of his drawing as the Captain turned.

“Can we come too?” Ramon swallowed the pickle in one gulp and finished d'Artagnan’s plea, assuming his best sad-puppy look. 

Duval rolled his eyes, half amused and half exasperated. “Yes. I don’t think I could stop you.” 

Chapter Fourteen: Be My Aid

Jacqueline struggled with the buttons of her dress tabard, fingers shaking with fatigue and something beyond fear as she tried to force the heavy metal buttons through their holes. Slim, gentle, calloused hands enfolded hers as Siroc came up behind her and rested his chin on her shoulder. “Let me.” 

Jacqueline relinquished the task, turning her head to kiss the side of his mouth as he did up the garment. She tasted salt, from the night before. They had both wept, separately and then together, holding each other in the dark. Before that they had talked for a long time, about life and death and what came after, and then Jacqueline had bent her head and soaked Siroc’s shirt with her tears.

He stroked her hair as she sobbed, speaking quietly about his family, his mother and his sisters, and his father, who had been a merchant. And when she reached up, Jacqueline found that his cheeks were streaming too, and it was her turn to comfort him. She cried with him, though, because he had been thirteen and she had been twenty-two.

They did not speak of Giulio Mazarin, who had taken so much from both their lives and whom they would face on the morrow. For one final night they held him at bay, and in the morning…. In the morning, we’ll see, Jacqueline thought, before she fell asleep beside Siroc.

When she woke she found her fear had hardened into anger, into a cold, calm fury with knowledge behind it, so much more than the rage that had been born with her father’s death, though that was a part of it, too. This anger, directed at Cardinal Mazarin, was for Siroc, for what he was and what he had done, and for herself, because he loved her. 

Siroc had changed in the night, too, though she did not think he had slept. His face was set and very pale, his honey-blond hair combed back and tied at the collar of his snowy linen shirt. He looked, she thought, like a statue of Apollo she had seen in the palace gardens, though infinitely more beautiful, and man of marble formed by the sharp chisel cuts of life.

“There.” He pulled the tabard straight and stepped back to look at her. On another day his voice would have been decisive, approving. Now it was merely wistful. 

“It’s not a dress,” Jacqueline said, turning towards him, remembering something he had murmured the night before, that he would like to see her in a dress.

“No, it’s not,” he agreed, voice still with the same dimension of sadness, and then turned away, plucking at his own tunic.

“Help me get it off,” Jacqueline demanded, struck with a sudden thought, a way to make him smile, even on this morning.

Siroc’s eyes bulged slightly and he swallowed hard. “Jacqueline, I don’t think-” he began.

“I’m going to wear a dress!” She turned and gripped his shoulders, grinning at him a little manically. “We can take that revelation away from Mazarin, at least. Help me, Siroc, please!”

Licking his lips, he nodded. “Do you- do you have a dress?”

“Several.” She kissed him swiftly and hard. “Help me out of this thing.” She tugged at the tunic before Siroc took her hands away and made swift work of the buttons.

”Go change. I’ll cover for you with Captain Duval.” Tossing the tabard on to a chair, he pulled her to him, hugging her tightly, his mouth on her neck, then her cheek, and finally on her lips. “Go, Jacqueline.”

He let her precede him out the door and turned the opposite way down the hall. Jacqueline hurried to her room and found her hands were trembling again, but for quite a different reason. She fumbled with the locked chest at the foot of her bed and drew out one of her three dresses, the only one she had never worn. 

She’d bought it months ago, and the seamstress had told her it was a morning dress. Jacqueline hoped the soft maroon poplin would be suitable for an audience at court, and then berated herself for being so frivolous. You’re not going to start a fashion, she told herself. You’re going to make a point. To Mazarin and everyone else. But it was Siroc’s reaction she was most worried about as she pulled her hood over her face and dodged through Musketeer Headquarters to the Captain’s office.

All four of the men inside reacted visibly as she turned the corner. D'Artagnan broke of conversation with Ramon and began to smirk, while the Spaniard frowned and took a step forward. “Senorita?”

Grinning, Jacqueline pushed her hood back. “It’s just me, Ramon.”

He staggered backwards theatrically. “Dios mio, Jacqueline!” He rallied quickly, striding forward and catching up her hand. Before he could draw it to his lips, however, the man behind him reached out and pushed him to one side. 

D'Artagnan’s smirk grew as Siroc finished moving Ramon and stared at Jacqueline for a long time, blinking. “I think the lady’s here for someone else, Ramon.”

Jacqueline looked down self-consciously, smoothing the rich red fabric, wishing she owned jewelry or had had time to apply cosmetics. “Does it look all right?”

“You look-” Siroc began, and stopped, sounding strangled. “You look beautiful.” He was still blinking, as though he couldn’t believe it, but he stepped forward and kissed her lightly, and then offered her his arm. 

“Yes, very nice, Leponte,” Captain Duval broke in gruffly, though he couldn’t quite hide a smile. He still had not become accustomed to using her real name, so Jacqueline let him “keep up the pretense,” as he termed it. “Are we ready, gentlemen- and lady?” The cadets nodded as one. “Then lead the way,” he said to Siroc and Jacqueline.

She pulled the hood of her cloak over her face as the Musketeers walked the short distance to the palace. Beside her, Siroc strode silently, a man of marble once more. Every now and then, though, he would look down at her and smile, a brief flash of utter joy, before the remembrance of what they were going to do eclipsed it. 

The party was expected at the Louvre, and led into the king’s presence with the majordomo’s usual aplomb. On Louis’s right sat the Cardinal, and behind the Cardinal a detail of his Guard. But neither the Queen nor any of her ladies were in attendance, and the usual crowd of courtiers and fawning minor nobles was absent. 

Mazarin has arranged the chessboard to suit his plans, Jacqueline thought, very grateful that the Captain had called the four of them into his office the night before for a planning session. They had laid out this morning’s strategy as meticulously as if Mazarin had been an opposing general on the field of battle. 

Once the king acknowledged the Musketeers, the four men bowed, and Jacqueline attempted to curtsey. Louis seemed to notice her for the first time. “Who is this?” he wanted to know, looking her up and down approvingly. “This was supposed to be a private audience to discuss-” he threw a glare over his shoulder at Mazarin- “certain matters concerning the Musketeers.” Louis did not sound at all displeased, though.

Jacqueline took a deep breath, feeling Siroc’s hand tighten on hers. “I have as much right to be here as my comrades, your majesty.” She pushed her hood back with her free hand and shook her hair out, eyes not on Louis but on the man in red behind him. 

“My name is Jacqueline Roget,” she said, voice calm but ringing. “Cardinal Mazarin’s Guards murdered my father. For the past year I have been masquerading as a man, Jacques Leponte, in the Musketeers, because I-”

“You see, your majesty, an unnatural woman and a traitor, like her father was!” Mazarin spat, rising languidly to stand beside the king. 

“My father was a good man!” Only Siroc’s iron grip on her hand kept Jacqueline from shouting, though her voice shook with rage. “You ordered him killed without any cause.”

“Who will you choose to believe, your majesty?” Mazarin turned a solicitous glance on the young king. “This trollop, or me, your trusted advisor?”

“I don’t know,” Louis said doubtfully, after a moment. “Were there any other witnesses?” He looked between Mazarin and d'Artagnan, as if seeking guidance.

Painfully, Jacqueline remembered Gerard. “My brother, your majesty. But he’s in America.”

“Another traitor.” The Cardinal threw Jacqueline a triumphant smirk, voice calm and cool. “He escaped from the Bastille shortly after my men executed his father.”

“That was no execution.” A slightly familiar, dark-haired Guard stepped out from the ranks of his fellows, offering a bow to the king and then to Jacqueline. “I have no love for the Musketeers, your majesty, but I will not stand by and see an innocent victim of injustice punished. Mademoiselle Roget speaks the truth. It was murder.”

The Cardinal recovered quickly. “You forget your place, Corporal,” he snarled, barely looking at the man.

“Oh, let the man talk, Mazarin!” Louis waved a hand. “That’s two against one, isn’t it, Corporal- what is your name?”

“Eriq Faucon, your majesty.” His grim expression barely twitched. “The story is Mademoiselle Roget’s to tell.” He nodded to Jacqueline.

The pressure of Siroc’s hand was now more reassuring than warning, for which Jacqueline was grateful. D'Artagnan reached out to squeeze her shoulder as she told the brief tale.

When she finished, the king turned to Eriq. “Is this the truth?” he demanded.

“It is, your majesty,” the Guard confirmed, standing very stiffly as if waiting to see which way the wind would blow.

“Then it is two against one!” Louis crowed. His face fell, though, when he saw the rage on his advisor’s.

“You would accept the testimony of these two…conspirators, your majesty, instead of my word?” 

“They don’t look like conspirators to me, Mazarin.” Louis narrowed his eyes at Jacqueline and Eriq. “Are you?” he asked, eyes twinkling, and when Mazarin wasn’t looking, he winked at Jacqueline.

Hiding smiles, both of them replied in the negative.

“Well, it sounds like self-defense to me, Mazarin,” Louis began cautiously, voice gaining strength as he went on. “Your man killed her father, and she killed him.” 

“There are laws, your majesty!” the Cardinal protested, color rising.

Louis raised a hand impatiently. “Well, I’m the king, aren’t I? I shall issue a royal pardon for you and your brother, Mademoiselle Roget.”

“Your majesty, no!” Mazarin lunged forward, seemed to remember himself, and merely laid a hand on the king’s arm, smiling blandly.

Ignoring him, Louis pulled out of his grasp and tilted his chin up regally. “It’s already done.”

“Thank you, your majesty.” Jacqueline curtseyed deeply, blinking back tears of disbelief and joy. ‘For you, Papa,’ she thought. ‘For you.’ She had to get to a church soon. Thanks had to be given for this day, and that was surely the place to start.

But Giulio Mazarin had only been subdued, not beaten. A step behind the king, he would now accept any victory he could grasp, however petty. “Now, your majesty, it only remains to be seen whether or not a woman will be allowed to remain in your Musketeers.”

Louis thought a moment. “Well, if she’s innocent, I don’t see why she can’t be a Musketeer. It might be fun.” His face lit up. “You could wear a dress once in a while, and attend royal functions!” 

Jacqueline could not stop grinning as she nodded gratefully. Before Mazarin could protest this, Captain Duval stepped forward. “If I may say a word on behalf of one of my soldiers, your majesty?” Louis, now seated, motioned for him to continue. 

Jacqueline listened with barely contained amazement as her Captain, her gruff and stolid Captain, proceeded to tell the king what a model soldier she was, and that she had proved herself in the line of duty many times. Jacqueline couldn’t remember any of them at the moment, because she was trying to hold back tears at the overwhelming grace of this day.

“Well, then, I suppose it’s up to you.” Louis grinned at her encouragingly. “Do you still want to be a Musketeer?” 

Unable to gather words, Jacqueline nodded, and then realized this was terribly disrespectful. “Yes, your majesty. As long as they- and you- will have me. I can think of no better way to spend my life than in the service of France and her king.” 

“Oh, very well said!” Louis trilled. “Well, is everything settled, then?”

Looking down, smiling still, Jacqueline thought of the man beside her, and what had been taken from him. Of what was still not ‘settled’ in his life. And of what she could do in this moment, with the king’s favor. And she left the carefully orchestrated plan Duval had laid out for them. “Your majesty,” she began, voice sounding very feminine in her own ears, “there is something else I must do here, if I may?”

“What is that?” Louis leaned forward, intrigued.

“I must report the existence of a secret society bent on the overthrow of the monarchy and the church.” Jacqueline took a deep breath, wondering where she was pulling the words from, though she and Siroc had pieced together the existence of the Order of the Knights of the Black Tabernacle weeks ago.

”Among their crimes was a theft, seven years ago, of a set of ancient books and an obelisk, and the murder of the family who owned them. The leader of this occult group is guilty of even more terrible things, your majesty, unnatural and terrible crimes for which he must be made to answer.” Jacqueline kept her voice as even as she could, feeling Siroc go rigid beside her. 

Cardinal Mazarin had gone a mottled shade of purple. He flicked his eyes up and down Siroc for the first time, and she saw the inventor flinch slightly. It was the same reflex she’d seen previously; a stiffening, a 

slight hunching of the shoulders, a drilling of the hands into the pockets as if to present a smaller target. Beneath that knowing scrutiny, every flaw was revealed. For a second she knew Siroc saw himself as the Cardinal saw him: property to be reclaimed, used, and discarded.

Jacqueline put an arm around him as Louis pursed his lips. “These are very serious charges. Do you have proof? Or someone you wish to accuse?” 

Jacqueline would not look at any of her fellow Musketeers as she said, “Cardinal Mazarin, your majesty.” And she looked into his dark, blank eyes, and could have sworn she saw flames flicker within.

His expression did not change. “Surely you cannot believe this, your majesty,” he said silkily, still looking at Jacqueline. “How preposterous.”

“I don’t know,” Louis began doubtfully, tapping his chin. “There have been rumors-”

“There is proof.” Everyone had forgotten about Eriq, standing silently, face clouded with rage. ”I can show you a secret passage, from the Cardinal’s chambers to a secret meeting place where the books and the obelisk are kept.” Eriq said quietly, his tone just as severe as his expression, as if he, too, was finally obtaining the chance to exorcise personal demons. 

“Well, show me then!” Louis declared, rising. “You stay here, Mazarin,” he directed, as Mazarin made to follow them. “Captain- keep an eye on him.” He sounded slightly smug. 

“Your majesty?” Siroc stepped away from Jacqueline, standing as if a great weight had been lifted from his shoulders. “May I come? The texts and the obelisk…were my family’s.” 

Louis nodded. “Then you have a right to, of course.” He put a hand on the inventor’s shoulder almost tentatively as the three of them departed, though Jacqueline thought she detected a little swagger in the king’s gait.

Jacqueline watched her lover depart to take back what was his, though she felt that he had already regained a great deal this day, and was glad she had been able to give some of it back to him.

Captain Duval was speaking very softly to the Cardinal, an iron grip on the red-clad man’s arm. She turned finally to look at d'Artagnan and Ramon, only to have both of them try to hug her at the same time, and she felt her heart would burst, because of this day, because she and Siroc were finally free. 

Chapter Fifteen: Fair and Outward

It was nearly noon by the time the Musketeers could return to Headquarters. Jacqueline walked beside Siroc, carrying several of the heavy tomes that had finally been recovered from Mazarin’s dark dungeons. D'Artagnan and Ramon had the rest, but Siroc himself carried only the obelisk, cradling it carefully as though the obsidian might 

shatter at any moment.

The object still frightened Jacqueline a little, though Siroc had explained that the knowledge they contained was not inherently evil, though Mazarin had tried to use it for his own diabolical purposes. She was glad he had them back, as they represented a link to his family and his past, and a triumph over Mazarin.

Once at Headquarters, Captain Duval dragged d'Artagnan off to the duty he’d weaseled out of that morning, and Ramon, hungry, volunteered to bring lunch back for everyone from the Café. Jacqueline, juggling the books the other two had piled in her arms, followed Siroc to his lab and laid them down where he pointed.

Crossing the room in two long strides, he set the obelisk beside the books and caught her up in his arms. She returned the embrace and they held each other tightly for a long time, neither of them speaking.

And then Siroc put his lips to her ear and whispered, each word a kiss, “If we start right now, you can get in a good six hours of review before tomorrow.” 

Laughing, Jacqueline pulled back. “What do you mean?”

He was suddenly all business. “The Examen d’Ecole Classique. It’s tomorrow afternoon.”

Jacqueline felt the bottom drop out of her heart. She’d thought all her problems were solved that morning at the palace, having forgotten all about the test. It scared her more than Mazarin had, and made her stomach perform a series of complicated flips that left her dizzy and nauseous. She sat down hard. “All right.” But first she turned her head to kiss him. It was several hours before they actually did any studying. 

Once they had between them exhausted everything she needed to brush up on, Jacqueline stumbled to bed, where she tossed and turned until Siroc slipped into her room and held her, stroking her hair until she fell asleep.

He was still there when she woke in the morning, and so they were almost late to breakfast. D'Artagnan and Ramon were finally reduced to knocking on the door, and whooped uproariously when Siroc disentangled himself from the bed and opened it. The irate and tousled inventor then chased them down the hall, pelting them with pillows. As they raced past Duval’s office, she heard him yell, “Those are Musketeer property, private!” but she could hear the smile in his voice.

Stifling giggles, Jacqueline locked her door and washed up, nearly forgetting her nervousness. Compromising between her uniform and her wishes, she threw her jacket over a dark blue muslin dress and went to make her friends settle down.

Breakfast was a silent affair; Siroc seemed more nervous than she was. He kept muttering things under his breath as he picked at his croissant, and when Jacqueline made him tell her what they were, they turned out to be formulas or important dates. After listening to him expound for five minutes on the Roman form of government, Jacqueline gave up. Leaning across the table until their noses nearly touched, she glared at him. 

“Siroc, stop. If I don’t know it now, there’s no hope. Don’t worry. I had the best teacher in all of France.”

The cadets around them seemed to not know where to look. They had taken uneasily to the revelation that one of their number was female. Several had told Jacqueline frankly that they’d never get used to seeing her in a dress, and a couple had been very hostile. She had ignored them, but she knew that Ramon and d'Artagnan, at least, had given as good as she’d got. Jacqueline knew getting used to her would take them time, that they would see eventually that she hadn’t changed. 

Now, however, she had only one worry on her mind. She couldn’t get Siroc to eat any more, so she stood and folded her napkin. “Come on then. We don’t want to be late.”

The four of them walked with a group of other first-year cadets who also had to sit the Examen. In the middle of the nervous chatter, Jacqueline was silent, one arm through Siroc’s and the other through Ramon’s. It was her turn to wonder about the things she didn’t know, as the tide swept her along.

At L’Academie, a large room with high ceilings and windows had been set aside for the Examen. Only those testing were allowed inside, so Jacqueline left her friends with a quick hug apiece and followed the other cadets inside. 

The proctor, an emaciated man in a shiny brocade suit, looked down his nose at her when she gave the name that was on his list and then her real name, but apparently word had been sent over from the palace about this new development. He allowed her to take a seat with the others, though he sniffed a little.

The first section of the test concerned Literature. Beads of sweat broke out on her forehead as Jacqueline opened the test, but she smiled as she began to read the first selection. Studies serve for pastimes, for ornaments and for abilities…. It was Bacon’s Of Studies, the very first thing she and Siroc had read together. Smiling, thinking of warm brown eyes, Jacqueline dipped her quill and began to answer the questions. 

~*~

One evening, a week after the Examen, Jacqueline and Marthe were sitting at the bar, debating the merits of the baker’s newest creation. “Why,” Jacqueline wanted to know, “is it called a coffee cake if there isn’t any coffee in it?”

“Because you eat it with coffee,” Marthe explained around a mouthful of the cake. “Or you can dip it into coffee. But a coffee-flavored cake isn’t a bad idea. I wonder if you could grind the beans very finely and mix them with the flour?” She ran a hand thoughtfully through her pale blond hair, making it stand up and then flop back over in disarray.

Jacqueline rolled her eyes. “You sound like Siroc.” A little dreamy smile crossed her lips as she said the name, at which Marthe laughed. Jacqueline retaliated by poking her with a fork.

The baker leaned backwards. “Oh, Siroc,” she gushed, fluttering her 

eyelashes theatrically, one hand holding her hat over her heart.

“Stop,” Jacqueline hissed, “someone will hear you!”

She continued to flutter. “I don’t care. If a woman can be a Musketeer, then a woman can be a baker.”

“Don’t change the world all at once,” Jacqueline muttered, cutting herself another piece of cake.

“Yes, that’s Jacqueline’s job,” said a voice behind her. She turned to see d'Artagnan, with Ramon and Siroc not far behind him. 

Marthe made a face at him. Jacqueline hadn’t told any of her friends outright that “Etienne Noret” was female, but both of them thought that at least d'Artagnan had guessed. She’d caught all of them squinting at her friend, but then again, she wondered if, because of her, the three of them didn’t second-guess every effeminate man who crossed their paths.

“Good news,” Ramon began, sitting down and helping himself to a piece of cake. “Captain Duval told me that Cardinal Mazarin is under investigation from the Vatican.” 

Jacqueline made a face. “I am glad, but I don’t even want to think about…him today.”

“And we went by L’Academie and got the Examen results,” Siroc said, coming up and kissing Jacqueline’s cheek. Marthe pretended to be sick behind the counter, and d'Artagnan laughed.

Jacqueline tried to glare at both of them and still smile up at Siroc. “How badly did I do?” she wanted to know, sure that if he was this happy, she couldn’t have done too badly.

“See for yourself.” He handed her the list of cadets, ranked by score.

Jacqueline looked at the middle of the list, did not see her name, and, with a sinking heart, scanned the bottom. “My name’s not on here.”

“Yes it is.” He put an arm around her shoulder and pointed- at the very top, where names of the cadets who’d tied for the highest score were separated from the rest by a thin black line. There were only three. One of them, Jacques Leponte, had been crossed out, and beside it someone had scrawled Jacqueline Roget. 

“You did it,” Siroc hugged her, voice warm in her ear. “I am so proud of you.”

Jacqueline’s mouth worked silently for a moment before she closed it and relaxed into his embrace. “Two months ago I couldn’t read, Siroc. I couldn’t have done it without you,” she said, when she could.

“Oh, you’d have found a way.” He nuzzled her ear until she batted him away, laughing.

“I wouldn’t have wanted to,” Jacqueline murmured, turning her head to 

kiss him, certain everyone in the room could feel how deliriously happy she was.

D'Artagnan cleared his throat. “The two of you are going to be thrown out for public indecency.” But he was smiling as he arched an eyebrow at the pair.

“Shut up, d'Artagnan,” both of them said at once, but disentangled themselves reluctantly.

“Jacqueline, can I have a word?” Ramon asked, and she followed him a little way away, though with the noise of the filling Café, nothing above a shout could be overheard.

Frowning, the poet pointed discreetly to Marthe. “He’s a she, too, right?”

Jacqueline nodded, grinning. “Yes. Her name is Marthe.”

Ramon punched the air. “Wonderful! I love a woman who can cook.” Jacqueline shooed him in the direction of the kitchen, watching him snag another piece of cake and begin to flirt with Marthe, who blushed and stuck her tongue out at Jacqueline.

Laughing, Jacqueline turned, only to spot a familiar face next to her. “Corporal Faucon!” she said, surprised. She knew he frequented the Café, but they had never spoken. “I didn’t get a chance to thank you for what you did at the palace.”

He made her a little bow. “No thanks are necessary. And it’s not Corporal anymore. The Guard doesn’t let informers remain in their midst. Captain Duval has offered me a commission in the Musketeers, though. You may soon be taking orders from me,” Eriq added, with a brief, crooked grin.

Jacqueline laughed and tossed him a playful salute. “Then can I buy your goodwill with a drink, sir?”

Eriq nodded, smiling. “As long as it’s not coffee.”

And he followed her over to where her friends sat, joining the group a little stiffly but with good will, and Jacqueline sat with them for half an hour until Siroc touched her sleeve, a question in his eyes. After a moment the two of them slipped away through the back door, running through the street to Musketeer Headquarters.

Siroc shut the door of his lab behind him, Jacqueline already in his arms. She didn’t have to look around, to take her eyes from his as he swept her inside. She knew this room better than any other; a map of it had been etched on her heart. Once it had been Siroc’s only haven, his escape from the world. Now it belonged to both of them. She had learned to read here, and learned other things, too, his secrets and his pain, and that he loved her. Jacqueline had matched that love with her own, and it had been her turn to teach Siroc something: the power of love to turn sorrow into joy, and to remake a past into a future, as they would tonight. 

Outside, the stars began to move.


End file.
